Tales of Secret Egypt.

by Sax Rohmer.

PART I

TALES OF AB TABaH

I

THE YASHMAK OF PEARLS

The _duhr_, or noonday call to prayer, had just sounded from the minarets of the Mosques of Kalan and En-Nasir, and I was idly noting the negligible effect of the _adan_ upon the occupants of the neighboring shops--coppersmiths for the most part--when suddenly my errant attention became arrested.

A mendicant of unwholesome aspect crouched in the shadow of the narrow gateway at the entrance to the Sk es-Saigh, or gold and silver bazaar, having his one serviceable eye fixed in a malevolent stare upon something or someone immediately behind me.

It is part and parcel of my difficult profession to subdue all impulses and to think before acting. I sipped my coffee and selected a fresh cigarette from the silver box upon the rug beside me. In this interval I had decided that the one-eyed mendicant cherished in his bosom an implacable and murderous hatred for my genial friend, Ali Mohammed, the dealer in antiques; that he was unaware of my having divined his b.l.o.o.d.y secret; and that if I would profit by my accidental discovery, I must continue to feign complete ignorance of it.

Turning casually to Ali Mohammed, I was startled to observe the expression upon his usually immobile face: he was positively gray, and I thought I detected a faint rattling sound, apparently produced by his teeth; his eyes were set as if by hypnosis upon the uncleanly figure huddled in the shadow of the low gate.

"You are unwell, my friend," I said.

Ali Mohammed shook his head feebly, removed his eyes by a palpable effort from the watcher in the gateway, but almost instantly reverted again to that fixed and terrified scrutiny.

"Not at all, Kernaby Pasha," he chattered; "not in the least."

He pa.s.sed a hand rapidly over a brow wet with perspiration, and moistened his lips, which were correspondingly dry. I determined upon a diplomatic _tour de force_; I looked him squarely in the face.

"For some reason," I said distinctly, "you are in deadly fear of the wall-eyed mendicant who is sitting by the gate of the Sk es-Saigh, O Ali Mohammed, my friend."

I turned with a.s.sumed carelessness. The beggar of murderous appearance had vanished, and Ali Mohammed was slowly recovering his composure.

I knew that I must act quickly, or he would deny with the urbane mendacity of the Egyptian all knowledge of the one-eyed one; therefore--

"Acquaint me with the reason of your apprehensions," I said, at the same time offering him one of his own cigarettes; "it may be that I can a.s.sist you."

A moment he hesitated, glancing doubtfully in the direction of the gate and back to my face; then--

"It is one of the people of Tir," he whispered, bending close to my ear; "of the evil _ginn_ who are the creatures of Ab Tabah."

I was puzzled and expressed my doubt in words.

"Alas," replied Ali Mohammed, "the Imam Ab Tabah is neither a man nor an official; he is a magician."

"Indeed! then you speak of one bearing the curious name of Ab Tabah, who is at once the holder of a holy office and also one who has dealings with the _ginn_ and the _Efreets_. This is strange, Ali Mohammed, my friend."

"It is strange and terrible," he whispered, "and I fear that my path is beset with pitfalls and slopeth down to desolation." He p.r.o.nounced the _Takbir_, "_Allahu akbar!_" and uttered the words "_Hadeed! ya mashm!_" (Iron! thou unlucky!), a potent invocation, as the _ginn's_ dread of that metal is well known. "There are things of which one may not speak," he declared; "and this is one of them."

Sorely puzzled as I was by this most mysterious happening, yet, because of the pious words of my friend, I knew that the incident was closed so far as confidences were concerned; and I presently took my departure, my mind filled with all sorts of odd conjectures by which I sought to explain the matter. I was used to the superst.i.tions of that quarter where almost every gate and every second street has its guardian _ginnee_, but who and what was Ab Tabah? An Imam, apparently, though to what mosque attached Ali Mohammed had not mentioned. And why did Ali Mohammed fear Ab Tabah?

So my thoughts ran, more or less ungoverned, whilst I made my way through streets narrow and tortuous in the direction of the Rondpoint du Mski. I saw no more of the wall-eyed mendicant; but in a court hard by the Mosque of el-Ashraf I found myself in the midst of a squabbling crowd of natives surrounding someone whom I gathered, from the direction of their downward glances, to be p.r.o.ne upon the ground.

Since the byways of the Sk el-Attarin are little frequented by Europeans, at midday, I thrust my way into the heart of the throng, thinking that some stray patron of Messrs. Cook and Son (Egypt, Ltd.) might possibly have got into trouble or have been overcome by the heat.

Who or what lay at the heart of that gathering I never learned. I was still some distance from the centre of the disturbance when an evil-smelling sack was whipped over my head and shoulders from behind, a hand clapped upon my mouth and jaws; and, lifted in muscular arms, I found myself being borne inarticulate down stone steps, as I gathered from the sound, into some cool cellar-like place.

II

In my capacity as Egyptian representative of Messrs. Moses, Murphy & Co., of Birmingham, I have sometimes found myself in awkward corners; but in Cairo, whether the native or European quarter, I had hitherto counted myself as safe as in London and safer than in Paris. The unexpectedness of the present outrage would have been sufficient to take my breath away without the agency of the filthy sack, which had apparently contained garlic at some time and now contained my head.

I was deposited upon a stone-paved floor and my wrists were neatly pinioned behind me by one of my captors, whilst another hung on to my ankles. The sack was raised from my body but not from my face; and whilst a hand was kept firmly pressed over the region of my mouth, nimble fingers turned my pockets inside out. I a.s.sumed at first that I had fallen into the clutches of some modern brethren of the famous Forty, but when my purse, note-case, pocket-book, and other belongings were returned to me, I realized that something more underlay this attempt than the mere activity of a gang of footpads.

At this conclusion I had just arrived when the stinking sack was pulled off entirely and I found myself sitting on the floor of a small and very dark cellar. Beside me, holding the sack in his huge hands, stood a pock-marked negro of most repulsive appearance, and before me, his slim, ivory-colored hands crossed and resting upon the head of an ebony cane, was a man, apparently an Egyptian, whose appearance had something so strange about it that the angry words which I had been prepared to utter died upon my tongue and I sat staring mutely into the face of my captor; for I could not doubt that the outrage had been dictated by this man's will.

He was, then, a young man, probably under thirty, with perfectly chiseled features and a slight black moustache. He wore a black _gibbeh_, and a white turban, and brown shoes upon his small feet. His face was that of an ascetic, nor had I ever seen more wonderful and liquid eyes; in them reposed a world of melancholy; yet his red lips were parted in a smile tender as that of a mother. Inclining his head in a gesture of gentle dignity, this man--whom I hated at sight--addressed me in Arabic.

"I am desolated," he said, "and there is no comfort in my heart because of that which has happened to you by my orders. If it is possible for me to recompense you by any means within my power, command and you shall find a slave."

He was poisonously suave. Beneath the placid exterior, beneath the sugar-lipped utterances, in the deeps of the gazelle-like eyes, was hid a cold and remorseless spirit for which the man's silken demeanor was but a cloak. I hated him more and more. But my trade--for I do not blush to own myself a tradesman--has taught me caution. My ankles were free, it is true, but my hands were still tied behind me and over me towered the hideous bulk of the negro. This might be modern Cairo, and no doubt there were British troops quartered at the Citadel and at the Kasr en-Nil; probably there was a native policeman, a representative of twentieth-century law and order, somewhere in the maze of streets surrounding me: but, in the first place, I was at a physical disadvantage, in the second place I had reasons for not desiring unduly to intrude my affairs upon official notice, and in the third place some hazy idea of what might be behind all this business had begun to creep into my mind.

"Have I the pleasure," I said, and electing to speak, not in Arabic but in English, "of addressing the _Imam Ab Tabah_?"

I could have sworn that despite his amazing self-control the man started slightly; but the lapse, if lapse it were, was but momentary.

He repeated the dignified obeisance of the head--and answered me in English as pure as my own.

"I am called Ab Tabah," he said; "and if I a.s.sure you that my discourteous treatment was dictated by a mistaken idea of duty, and if I offer you this explanation as the only apology possible, will you permit me to untie your hands and call an _arabiyeh_ to drive you to your hotel?"

"No apology is necessary," I a.s.sured him. "Had I returned direct to Shepheard's I should have arrived too early for luncheon; and the odor of garlic, which informed the sack that your zeal for duty caused to be clapped upon my head, is one for which I have a certain penchant if it does not amount to a pa.s.sion."

Ab Tabah smiled, inclined his head again, and slightly raising the ebony cane indicated my pinioned wrists, at the same time glancing at the negro. In a trice I was unbound and once more upon my feet. I looked at the dilapidated door which gave access to the cellar, and I made a rapid mental calculation of the approximate weight in pounds of the large negro; then I looked hard at Ab Tabah--who smilingly met my glance.

"Any one of my servants," he said urbanely, "who wait in the adjoining room, will order you an _arabiyeh_."

III

When the card of Ali Mohammed was brought to me that evening, my thoughts instantly flew to the wall-eyed mendicant of the Sk en-Nahhasin, and to Ab Tabah, the sugar-lipped. I left the pleasant company of the two charming American ladies with whom I had been chatting on the terrace and joined Ali Mohammed in the lounge.

Without undue preamble he poured his tale of woe into my sympathetic ears. He had been lured away from his shop later that afternoon, and, in his absence, someone had ransacked the place from floor to roof.

That night on his way to his abode, somewhere out Shubra direction I understood, he had been attacked and searched, finally to reach his house and to find there a home in wild disorder.

"I fear for my life," he whispered and glanced about the lounge in blackest apprehension; "yet where in all Cairo may I find an intermediary whom I can trust? Suppose," he pursued, and dropped his voice yet lower, "that a commission of ten per cent--say, one hundred pounds, English--were to be earned, should you care, Kernaby Pasha, to earn it?"

I a.s.sured him that I should regard such a proposal with the utmost affection.

"It would be necessary," he continued, "for you to disguise yourself as an aged woman and to visit the _harem_ of a certain wealthy Bey.