THE WATCH AND THE SCIMITAR.
The city of Algiers, the beautiful El Djzair, as the guide-book makercalls it, has long ceased to charm the true son of the East, _blase_with the nomadic fulness of the ultimate Levant, or charged with thoseimaginary Oriental splendors which are nowhere writ so large as in thecatalogues and advertisements of the later day upholsterer. This is notthe fault of the new Icosium, as any student of the Moorish town knowswell; nor is it to be laid to the account of the French usurpation, andthat strange juncture of Frank and Fatma, which has brought theboulevard to the city of the Corsairs and banished Mohammed to theshadow of the Kasbah. Rather, it is the outcome of coupons and ofco-operative enthusiasm, which sends the roamer to many lands, of whichhe learns the names, and amongst many people with whose customs heclaims familiarity.
To know Algiers, something more than a three days' _pension_ in theHotel de la Regence is necessary; though that is the temporal limit formany who return to Kensington or Mayfair to protest that "it is soFrench, you know." I can recollect well the monitions and advice which Ireceived two years gone when I ventured a voyage to Burmah--in thematter of the ruby interest--and determined to see Cairo, Tunis, and theCity of Mosques on my return westward. Many told me that I would dobetter to reach Jaffa and Jerusalem, others advised the seven churchesof Asia; many spoke well of Rhodes; all agreed, whether they had beenthere or whether they had not, that Algiers was eaten up withChauvinism, and scarce worthy a passing call. Barisbroke at the club,who is always vigorous in persuading other people not to do things,summed it up in one of his characteristically inane jokes. "It's had itsDey," said he, and buried himself in his paper as though the projectended then and there upon his own _ipse dixit_. This marked and decidedconsensus of opinion could have had but one result--it sent me to thetown of Hercules at the first opportunity.
If the truth is to be told, the visit was in some part one of pleasure,but in the more part a question of sequins. I had done well in theremoter East, and had sent some fine parcels of rubies, sapphires, andpearls to Bond Street; but a side-wind of curiosity casting me up uponthe shores of Tunis, I had bought there, in the house of a veryremarkable Jew, a bauble whose rival in strange workmanship and splendorof effect I have not yet met with. It was, to describe it simply, themodel of a Moorish scimitar perhaps four inches long, the sheathexquisitely formed of superb brilliants, the blade itself of platinum,and in the haft not only a strange medley of stones, but a little watchwith a thin sheet of very fine pearl for a face, and a superb diamond asthe cup of the hands. Although the jewels in this were worth perhapsfive hundred pounds, the workmanship was so fine, and the whole baublehad such an original look, that I paid eight hundred pounds for itcheerfully, and thought myself lucky to get it at that. What is more tothe point, however, is the fact that the hazard which gave me thepossession of the scimitar sent me also to Algiers to hunt there forlike curiosities--and in the end brought me a large knowledge of theMoorish town, and nearly cost me my life.
I had intended to stay in the town for three days, but on the veryevening of my coming to the Hotel d'Orleans in the Boulevard de laRepublique, I met a French lieutenant of artillery, a man by name EugeneChassaigne; an exceedingly pleasant fellow, and one who had some Arabic,but small appreciation of anything beyond the "to-day" of life. Helaughed at my notion of buying anything in the upper city, and urged menot to waste time plodding in dirty bazaars and amongst still dirtierdealers. For himself his one idea was to be _dans le mouvement_; but hebrought me to know, on the second day of my visit, a singularly docileMoor, Sidi ben Ahmed by name; and told me that if I still persisted inmy intention, the fellow would serve well for courier, valet, or in anyoffice I chose to place him. And in this he spoke no more than thetruth, as I was very soon to prove.
I have always thought when recalling this sheep-like Moor to myrecollection, that the Prophet had done him a very poor turn in locatinghim so far away from the blessings of company-promotion and ricketybuilding societies. His face would have been his fortune at any publicmeeting; and as for thoroughness, his love of detail was amazing. BeforeI had been in his hands for twenty-four hours he knew me; being able totell you precisely how much linen I carried, the number of gold piecesin my purse, my taste in fish and fruits, my object in coming to hiscountry. And this was vexatious; for all the vendors of Benares warefashioned in Birmingham, all the sellers of gaudy burnouses, thehucksters of the tawdriest carpets and the most flimsy scimitars, heldconcert on the steps of the hotel every time I showed my face withintwenty paces of the door. Sidi alone was immobile, stolid "_Nom d'unchien_--they are _blagueurs_ all," said he; and I agreed with him.
If these things troubled my man, the jewel I had purchased in Tunistroubled him still more. How he learned that I had it heaven alone couldtell; but he did not fail to come to me at _dejeuner_ each morning andto repeat with unfailing regularity the monition, "If Allah wills, thejewel is stolen." I used to tolerate this at first; but in the end heexasperated me; and upon the seventh morning I showed him the model andsaid emphatically, "Sidi, you will please to observe that Allah does notwill the loss of the jewel--let us change the subject." He gave me noanswer, but on the next morning I had from him the customarygreeting--and the laugh was all upon his side, for the scimitar wasgone.
I say that the laugh was with Sidi, but in very truth I do not believethat this worthy fellow ever laughed in his life. He possessed a stolidimmobility of countenance that would have remained in repose even at thesound of the last trumpet. The intelligence which I conveyed to him, Idoubt not with pathetic anger, and much bad language, moved him no morethan the soft south wind moved the statue of the first Governor-Generalout by the mosque there. He examined my ravished bag with a provokingsilence; muttered a few pessimistic sentences in Arabic; and then fellback upon the Koran and the platitudes of his prophet. If he had been anEnglishman, I should have suspected him without hesitation; but he boresuch a character, he had been so long a servant of the hotel, he was byhis very stolidity so much above doubt, that this course was impossible;and being unable to accuse him, I bade him take me to the nearest bureauof police, that I might satisfy my conscience with the necessary farce.This he did without a protest, but I saw that he looked upon me with apitying gaze, as one looks upon a child that is talking nonsense.
Although I flatter myself that I concealed my annoyance under a placidexterior, this loss affected me more than I cared to tell. For onething, the jewel was very valuable (I was certain that I could haveobtained a thousand pounds for it in Bond Street); I was convinced,moreover, that I should hardly discover its fellow if I searched Europethrough. During my stay at the Hotel d'Orleans I had kept it locked in awell-contrived leather pouch in my traveling trunk; and as this pouchhad been opened with my own keys it was evident that the thief hadaccess to my bedroom during the night--a conclusion which led me tothink again of this stolid Moor, and to declare that the case againsthim was singularly convincing. So strong, in fact, were my suspicionsthat I made it my first care to go to the _maitre_ of the hotel and todemand satisfaction from him with all the justifiable indignation whichfitted the case. When he heard my tale, his face would have givenRembrandt a study.
"How?" said he. "Monsieur is robbed, and _chez-moi_?"
I repeated that I was, and told him that if he did not recover thebauble in twenty-four hours, consequences would follow which would bedisastrous to his establishment. Then I asked him frankly about the MoorSidi; but he protested with tears in his eyes that he would as soonaccuse his own mother. He did not deny that some one in his house mightknow something about it; and presently he had marshaled the whole of hisservants in the central court, addressing them with the fierceaccusation of a _juge d'instruction_. It is superfluous to add that wemade no headway, and that all his "desolation" left me as far from thejewels I had lost as I was at the beginning of it.
From the hotel to the bureau of the police was an easy transition, but avery hopeless one. A number of extremely polite, and elaboratelybra
ided, officials heard me with interest and pity; and having coveredsome folios of paper with notes declared that nothing could be done. Forthemselves, their theory was that the Moor Sidi had been talking aboutmy treasure, and that some other domestic in the Hotel de la Regence hadopened my door while I slept and got possession of the ornament withlittle risk. But that any one should recover the property was in theiridea a preposterous assumption.
"It is on its way to Paris," said one of them as he closed his note-bookwith a snap, "and there's an end of it. We shall, without doubt, watchthe servants of the hotel closely for some time, but that should notencourage you. It is possible that the man Mohammed, the porter of theplace, may know something of the affair. We shall have his housesearched to-day, but, my friend, _ne vous montez pas la tete_, we arenot in Paris, and the upper town is worse than a beehive. I am afraidthat your hope of seeing the thing again is small."
I was afraid so, too; but being accustomed to strange losses and tostrange recoveries, I determined to venture something in the hazard, andto remain in Algiers for a few weeks, at any rate. The most difficultpart of my work lay in my ignorance of the city, and in that matter Sidialone could help me. Every day we went with measured and expectant treadthrough that labyrinth of fantastic and half-dark streets, whererepulsive hags grin at the wickets below, and dark eyes coquette at thegratings above; every day we delved in booths and bazaars, we haggledwith the jewel sellers, we bartered with the gold workers, but to nopurpose. I had come to think at last that the loss was not worth furthertrouble; and had made up my mind to return to London, when Irecollected with some self-reproach that I had as yet neglected one ofthe very simplest means to grapple with the occasion--that I had, infact, offered no reward for the recovery of the jeweled scimitar, and tothis omission owed, I did not doubt, the utter absence of clue orconviction.
When I was yet angry with myself at this absurd oversight I had a secondthought which was even more useful, and one to which I owed much beforeI had done with the matter. I remembered that the French police had setdown my loss to the loud talk of Sidi amongst the others at the hotel.Why, then, I asked, should not this man also scatter the tidings that Iwould give so many hundreds of francs for the recovery of the scimitar?No sooner had I got the idea than I acted upon it.
"Sidi," said I, when he came to me on the next morning, "I have heardmuch of your cleverness, but you have not yet found my property; now Iwill give a thousand francs to the man who brings it here within aweek."
To my utter surprise he bowed his head with his old gravity, andanswered, "If Allah wills, the jewel is found."
This was amazing, no doubt, and in its way a triumph of impudence. If hecould find it with that ease, then he must have known by whom it wasstolen. I turned upon him at once with the accusation, but he stood withthe gravity of granite and responded to all my threats with the simplegreeting, as of a father to a son,--
"And upon you be peace."
To have argued with such a rogue would have been as useful as ademonstration in theology before a mollah; to have accused him boldly ofthe theft would have been absurd, even had I not possessed such a wealthof testimony in his favor. I sent him about his business, therefore, andwent in search of my friend Chassaigne, who had been away since I lostthe trinket, but was then at the arsenal again. The lieutenant took thenews with edifying calmness, but assured me that I had at last taken theonly course which was at all likely to result in success.
"Our friend the Moor," said he, "is the most honorable of his kind inAlgiers, where all are rogues. I do not believe for a moment that hestole the jewels, although his father, his uncle, or his own brother mayhave done so. Your reward may tempt him to return them if the police setup a hue and cry; but if he suggests that you go up in the old town toreceive them, tell him you will do nothing of the sort. There are fartoo many dark eyes and sharp knives there for an Englishman's taste, anda Moor still has claims in Paradise for every Frank he sticks. If youtook the other course, and sought your money from this hotel-keeper, hewould bring a hundred to swear that you did not lose the stones in thehotel, and you would be where you are. It's annoying to adopt a _laissezaller_ policy, but I fear you can do nothing else."
I thought that he was right, but my habitual obstinacy was all upon me,and I found myself as much determined to recover the jewels I had lostas if they had been worth ten thousand pounds. I was quite sure thatthe police would do nothing, and save that they informed me in acumbrous document that they had searched the house of Mohammed theporter, and of five others, my surmise proved a true one. It was left toSidi, and for Sidi I waited on the morning of the ninth day with anexpectancy which was unwarrantably large. He came to me at his usualhour, eight o'clock, and when he had salaamed, he said,--
"If Allah is willing, the jewel is found--but the money is not enough."
"Not enough!" said I, choking almost with anger, "the money is notenough! Why, you brazen-faced blackguard, what do you mean?"
He replied with an appeal to the beard of the Prophet, and an evidentword of contempt for my commercial understanding. The irony of the wholesituation was so great, and his immobility so stupendous, that I quicklyforbore my anger and said,--
"Very well, Sidi, we will make it fifteen hundred francs." And with thathe went off again, and I saw him no more until the next day, when herepeated the _incha Allaeh_ and the intimation that the price was toolow. On this occasion my anger overcame me. I seized him by the throat,and shaking him roughly, said,--
"You consummate rascal, I believe you have the jewels all the time; ifyou don't bring them in an hour, I will take you to the police myself."
My anger availed me no more than my forbearance. It did but awaken thatinherent dignity before which I cowed; and when I had done with him, heleft me and came no more for three days. On the third morning when hereturned he looked at me with reproach marked in his deep black eyes;and raising his hands to heaven he protested once more in the old words,and to the old conclusion. I was then so wearied of the very sound ofhis voice that I took him by the shoulders and held him down upon anottoman until he would consent to bargain with me, shekel by shekel forthe return of my gems; and in the end he consented to make me thelongest speech that I had yet had from his lips.
"By the beard of my father," said he, "I protest to milord that neitherI nor my people have the precious thing he wots of; but the dog of athief, upon whose head be desolation, is known to me. For money he tookthe jewel, for money he shall lay it again at milord's feet; yet nothere, but in the house of his people, where none shall see and noneshall know."
A long argument, and some fine bargaining, enabled me to get to thebottom of the whole story; but only under a solemn oath that the keepingof the secret should be shared by no one. With much fine recital andmany appeals to the holy marabouts to bear witness, Sidi demonstratedthat the thief was no other than Mohammed the porter, who had the stonehidden with extraordinary cunning, and from whom it was to be got onlyat my own personal risk.
"Under the shadow of the Kasbah it lies," said he; "under the shadow ofthe Kasbah must you seek it with those I shall send to you, and noothers. Obey them in all things; be silent when they are silent, speakwhen they speak, fly and lose not haste when they bid you fly."
This was all very vague, but a deeper acquaintance with his purpose madeit the more clear. In answer to my question why he could not bring thejewel to the hotel, he said that it would never be surrendered except toa certain force; and with that force he would supply me. He himselfseemed to be under an oath to bear no hand to the emprise; and he wasemphatic in laying down the condition that I must go absolutely alone;or, said he, "the hand of Fatma shall not be passed nor that which youseek come to you."
Now, the proper spirit in which to have received this suggestion wouldhave been that of an uncompromising negative. Chassaigne had cautionedme particularly against going into the old town, and here was Ihearkening to a proposition to visit it not only by night, but in thecompany of those who possi
bly were honest, but more possibly werecut-throats. I knew well enough what he would say to the venture; andtruly I was much disposed to refuse it at the beginning, and to go toLondon as I had at first intended. This I told Sidi, and he gave me foranswer a shrug of the shoulders, which implied that if I did, myproperty, for which I hoped to get a thousand pounds, would certainlyremain behind me. Nor did threats and entreaties move him one iota fromhis position, neither on that day nor on the next two; so that I saw inthe end that I had better decide quickly, or take ship and fly a city ofindolent Frenchmen and rascally Moors.
It would prove tedious to recount to you the various processes ofreasoning by which, finally, I found myself of a mind to court thishazard and agreed to Sidi's terms. He on his part had vouched for mysafety; and after all, the man who ever wraps his life in cotton-wool,as it were, must see little beyond the stuffy box on his own habitation.Here was a chance to see the Moors _chez-eux_, possibly to risk a brokenhead with them; in any case, a chance which an adventurous man might bethankful for, and which I took.
Having once agreed to Sidi's terms, he set upon the realization of theproject with unusual ardor. The very next evening was chosen for theundertaking, the hour being close upon ten, and the Moor himselfaccompanying me some part of the way. He had advised me to equip myself_en Arabe_ for the business; and this I did with some little discomfort,especially in the manipulation of the long burnouse, and in the carriageof appalling headgear which he would not allow me to dispense with. Ihad put these things on at the hotel; but as it is not unusual for aFrank to ape the Moor when wishing to explore the upper town at night, Iescaped unpleasant curiosity, and arrived at the steep ascent of the Ruede la Lyre, feeling that I was like, at any rate, to get more excitementout of the old city than nine-tenths of the Englishmen who visit her.
Almost at the top of the street the Moor's friends met me. I could seelittle of their faces, for they covered them as much as possible withtheir somber-hued cloaks, but they salaamed profoundly on greeting me;and Sidi took his leave when he had exchanged a few words in Arabic withthem. From that time onward they did not speak, but went straightforward into the old quarter, and soon we had entered a narrow way whereflights of stairs, frequently recurring, led one up towards the Kasbah.Here the gables seemed to be exchanging whispered confidences as theycraned forwards across the stone-paved ascent; you could see the zenithof the silver sky shot with starlight through the jutting angles ofrickety roofs and bulging eaves; the hand of Fatma protected the hiddendoors of the pole-shored but singularly picturesque houses; the sound oftom-toms and _derboukas_ came from the courts of the Kahouaji. The peaceof the scene, deriving something from the distant and seductiveharmonies, got color from the slanting flood of moonlight which streamedupon the pavement, from the swell of song floating upward from thehidden courts. Here and there one imagined that black eyes looked downupon one from the gratings of the shadowed windows above; a Biskri,strong of limb and bronzed, lurked now and then in the dark angles ofthe quaint labyrinth; a few Moors passing down to the lower cityinclined their heads gravely as we passed them. But for the most partthe children of the Prophet had gone to their recreations or theirsleep; the narrow path of stairs was untenanted, the silence andsoftness of an African night held sway with all its potent beauty.
We must have mounted for ten minutes or more before my guides stopped ata large house in a particularly uninviting looking _cul-de-sac_; andhaving spoken a few words with an old crone at the wicket, we gainedadmittance to a large court, and found it packed with a very curiouscompany. It was a picturesque place, gloriously tiled, and surrounded bya gallery supported on slender columns of exquisite shape, terminatingin Moorish arches and fretwork balustrades. There the women, numberingsome score, sat; but I, knowing the danger of betraying the faintestinterest in a Moor's household, averted my eyes at once, and examinedmore minutely the strange scene below. Here was a dense throngsurrounding a dervish who danced until he foamed; a throng of bronzedand bearded Arabs sipping coffee and smoking hubble-bubble pipes withprofound gravity; a throng which seemed incapable of expressing any sortof emotion, either of pleasure or of pain. At the further end of thecourt, where many luxuriant palms and jars of gorgeous flowers gaveornament to a raised dais, musicians squatted upon their haunches,playing upon divers strange instruments, guitars, flutes, and thegourd-like _derbouka_, and sent up a hideous and unbroken wave ofdiscordant harmony which made the teeth chatter and seemed to agitateone's very marrow. It was a strange scene, full of life and color, andabove all of activity; and to what it owed its origin I have not learntto this day. I know only that our coming with such a lack of ceremonydid not disconcert either the host or his guests. They paused a momentto give us an "Es-salaam alikoum," to which we returned the expected"Oua alikoum es-salaam;" and with that we sat amongst the company, butin a very conspicuous place, and took coffee with the gravity of theothers.
I must confess that the surprise of finding myself in such a place wasvery great. I had gone with the Moors to recover a thousand pounds'worth of property, but how the visit brought me nearer to that, or toany purpose whatever, I could not see. I knew that I was the onlyEuropean in the company, and all tradition as well as common-sense toldme of my danger. Yet I had gone of my own will, and the Moor Sidi hadencouraged me to the risk, which after all, I thought, was worthbartering for the sight of so strange an entertainment. Indeed, it isnot in accord with my fatalistic creed to conjure up terrors of the mindin moments of comparative tranquillity; and when I realized that thequestion of wisdom, or want of wisdom, was no longer under discussion, Ifell in with the spirit of this singular festivity--and waited forenlightenment.
The feast of performance was now going briskly. A conjurer trod upon theheels of the dervish, and performed a few palpable feats which deceivedno one but himself; and after that we had the expected dancing girls,and the Ouled-Nails. Nor were the latter the central piece, as it were,of our host's program; for presently the Moors about me ceased theirbabbling; there was a restless chatter in the gallery above, the oldhost whispered something to his attendant, and new musicians, who hadrelieved the others, struck up a hideous banging of tom-toms,flageolets, and guitars. At that very moment, when I had come to theconclusion that Sidi ben Ahmed had made a fool of me, and that myerrand was to end idly, one of my guides spoke for the first time,putting his mouth close to my ear, and using very passable English."Now," said he, "be ready;" but whether he meant me to prepare for somesaltatory display, or for action, he did not condescend to say; andbefore I could ask him a great applause greeted the advent of a dancinggirl, who bounded into the arena with a conventional run, and at oncebegan her amazing gyrations.
She was a beautiful girl, not more than eighteen years of age, I shouldthink, and probably a Circassian. She had clear-cut features, acomplexion bright with the freshness of youth, a figure of fine balanceand maturity; but the most striking thing about her was her hair. Moreabundant or glossier tresses I have never seen. In color, a deepgolden-red, this magnificent silky gift was bunched upon her head in agreat coil at the back, and fell thence almost to her feet. It coveredher when she chose as the burnouses covered the Moors who watched her;and she used it in her dancing with a _chic_ and skill unimaginable. Inone moment coiling it about her body so that she seemed wrapped in asheen of gold; in the next cast like an outspread fan behind her, shepresented a picture ravishing beyond description, and one which drewshouts of "Zorah, Zorah!" even from the women in the galleries above. Isat under the spell, enraptured like the rest; and as the girl floatedwith a dreamy lightness, or pirouetted with amazing agility, or sweptpast me with a motion that was the very essence of grace, I was readyto declare that the dance was unrivaled by anything I had seen in any ofthe capitals.
Now, the girl must have been dancing for a couple of minutes, and theaudience was thoroughly held by her prodigious cleverness, when I,engrossed as the others, was suddenly interrupted in my contemplation ofher by the action of the Moors, my guides. To my utter surpris
e they all ofa sudden stood up on either side of me, and one of them crying to me inEnglish as before to be ready, the other seemed to wait for the girlZorah, who, with streaming hair and body thrown well back, was dancingdown towards us.
A few of the company near to us turned their heads, and cried out at theinterruption; but the girl came on with quick steps, and when she wasjust upon us, the Moor who waited seized her by her hair, and puttinghis hands in the great coil upon her head, he unrolled it with a stronggrasp, and the missing scimitar, to my unutterable surprise, rolled outupon the pavement.
I am willing to confess that for one moment the whole action dazed me socompletely that I stood like a fool gaping at the jewel, and at thegirl, who had begun to cling to the Moor and to scream. The thing was sounlooked for, so strange, so incredible, that I could do nothing but askmyself if it were really my bauble that lay upon the floor, or was I thevictim of an incomprehensible trick? Yet there was the jewel, and thereat my elbow were the two Moors, now all ready for the action aftermath.Scarce, in fact, had one of them picked up my property and crammed itinto my hand before the uproar began, the whole roomful of erstwhilesedate-looking men springing to their feet and turning upon us. For aninstant, the Moor who had snatched the jewel for me kept them back withan harangue in Arabic of which I did not understand one word; but hisbest and only card failed him at the first playing, and it remained toface the danger and to fight it.
Of the extraordinary scene that followed I remember but little. Itseemed to me that I was surrounded in an instant by hungry, gleaminghawk-like eyes which glowed with mischief; that women screamed, thatlamps were overturned; that I saw knives flashing on every side of me.Had Sidi's men then failed him or displayed any craven cunning, I takeit that my body might have been hurled from the Kasbah within a minuteof the recovery of the jewel; but they showed quite an uncommon fidelityand courage. Standing on either side of me so that my body was almostwedged between theirs, they suddenly flashed long knives in the air, andcut and parried with wondrous dexterity. For myself, I had only myfists, and these I used with a generous freedom, thinking even in thedanger that a Moor's face is a substantial one to hit; and that a littleboxing goes a long way with him. Yet I could not help but realize thatthe minute was a supreme one, and as the crowd of demoniacal andshouting figures pressed nearer and nearer, threatening to bear us downin the _melee_, I heard my heart thumping, and began to grow giddy.
As the press became more furious, the two men who had done so well weregradually carried away from me. I found myself at last in the lowercorner of the room, surrounded by four burly fellows (the main body ofthe company swarming round the Moors, my guides); and of these but onehad a knife in his hand. With this, taking the aggressive, he made aprodigious cut at me, which slit my left arm from the shoulder almost tothe elbow; but I had no pain from the wound in the excitement of themoment; and I sent him howling like a dervish with a heavy blow low downupon the chest. Of the others, one I hit on the chin, whereupon he criedlike a woman; but the remaining two sprang upon me with altogether anunlooked-for activity; and bore me down with a heavy crash upon thepavement. I thought then that the end had come; for not only was I halfstunned with the blow, but the man who knelt upon my chest gripped mythroat with grim ferocity and threatened to squeeze the life out of meas I lay. In that supreme moment I recollect that the lights of the roomdanced before my eyes in surprising shapes; that I saw a vision ofdark-eyed but screaming women in the gallery above; that the jewel in myvest cut my skin under the pressure of the Moor's knee; and that I fellto wondering if I would live one minute or five. Then, as a new andviolent shouting reached me, even above the singing in my ears, the Moorsuddenly let go his hold, the light of the scene gave way to utterimpenetrable darkness, and I fainted.
Buying the scimitar.
--_Page 152_]
* * * * *
Next day I took _dejeuner_ at the Cafe Apollon with my arm in a sling,and Chassaigne's talk to whet my appetite. He had occupied himselfduring the morning in cross-examining Sidi, from whom he had wormed thewhole secret of the robbery.
"It is as clear as the sun," said he, "the porter Mohammed was advisedto steal the jewel by the man I unfortunately recommended to you.Mohammed, knowing that the police would search his house and watch him,hid the jewel in his wife's hair."
"His wife!" said I. "Was this dancing girl married to a scamp likethat?"
"Certainly; these Circassians don't make great matches, if they make agood many of them. Their husbands are generally loafers about the cafes;and this girl was no more fortunate in that way than most of hersisters. You see, the fun of the business is that Sidi got two thousandfrancs from this man for telling him how to steal your jewels, andanother two thousand from you for stealing them back again. That's whyhe did not go with you himself last night. Luckily, I went into yourhotel at ten o'clock, and learning from the man where you had gone, Ifollowed you with a dozen of my fellows."
"You came at a happy time, my dear fellow," said I, "in another fiveminutes I should have needed only an executor."
"That's true; you were nearly dead when I had the pleasure of kickingthe man who sat on your head. But it was your own fault, you mustadmit."
"Any way," said I, "I got the stones, and that's something."
He agreed to this, and when I had thanked him for the great service hehad done me, we parted. That night I left Algiers, carrying with me thepacific benediction of the admirable Moor, Sidi, who, despite the factthat I had kicked him down the steps of the hotel in the morning, camewith me to the steamer, and patronized me to the end of it. I can hearto this day his last and final salutation:--
"Blessed be Allah, the jewel is found!"
THE SEVEN EMERALDS.