"Well, Rrisa, tell me if thou couldst!"

"Yea, Master. _Ya gharati!_ (O my calamity!) It is true I could." The words issued from his unwilling throat as if torn out by main force.

"But I earnestly beg of you, my sheik, do not make me do this thing!"

"Rrisa, if I command, thou must obey me! 'There is only one thing can ever loose the bonds I have knotted about thee."

"And that is certainty (death), Master?"

"That is certainty! But this, to the oath-breaker and the abuser of the salt, means a place among the _mujrim_ (sinful). It means Jehannum, and an unhappy couch shall it be!"

Rrisa's face grew even more drawn and lined. A trembling had possessed his whole body.

"Master, I obey!" he made submission, then stood waiting with downcast eyes of suffering.

"It is well," said the chief, rising. He stood for a moment peering at Rrisa, while the hum and roar of the great air-liner's mechanism, the dip and sway of its vast body through the upper air, seemed to add a kind of oppressive solemnity to the tense situation. To the cabin wall the Master turned. There hung a large-scale map of the Arabian Peninsula. He laid a hand on the vast, blank interior, and nodded for Rrisa to approach.

"Listen, thou," said he. "Thy knowledge is sufficient. Thou dost understand the interpretation of maps, and canst read lat.i.tude and longitude. Mark here the place of the Hidden City!"

"Of the Bara Jannati Shahr, Master? Ah no, _no_!"

"So then, that is its name?" the chief demanded, smiling.

"No, _M'alme_. Thou dost know the Arabic. Thou dost understand this means only, in thy tongue, the Very Heavenly City."

"True. Well, let it pa.s.s. Very Heavenly City it shall be, till the real name becomes known. Come now, mark the place of the Hidden City and mark it truly, or the greatest of sins will lie upon thy soul!"

The Arab advanced a brown, quivering hand.

"Give me a pencil, Master, and I obey!" he answered, in a voice hardly audible.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE INNER SECRET OF ISLAM

The chief handed him a pencil. Rrisa intelligently studied the map for nearly two minutes, then raised his hand and made a dot a few miles north-east of the intersection of fifty degrees east and twenty degrees north. The Master's eye was not slow to note that the designated location formed one point of a perfect equilateral triangle, the other points of which were Bab el Mandeb on the south and Mecca on the north.

"There, _M'alme_," whispered the Arab, in a choking voice. "Now I have told you the secret of all secrets, and have lost my soul. I have revealed the inner mystery of Islam, that to this day no man of the Feringi hath ever known. I am a very great man of sin, and should have first torn out my tongue.

"But my life is in your hands, Master, and I have shared your salt.

Allah knows I was forced to speak. _Shal'lah!_ (It is _Allah's_ will!) Allah will weigh my heart and will forgive, for he is the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful! I beg you, Master, now let me go!"

"Soon, Rrisa," the chief answered, turning away from the map. "But first there is something of highest import I must show thee."

"And what may that be, my sheik?" the Arab queried, his widening eyes fixed on the blanket that covered the loot from Mecca. Instinctively he sensed that some horrible sight was about to be presented to him.

His face paled even more. He licked dry lips with a tongue equally dry, and leaned against the table to steady himself. "What have you now to show me, O _M'alme?_"

"Listen!" the chief commanded sternly. "The Meccans are a people corrupt and accursed. 'Their hearts are black as their skins are white.' They live by fleecing the _Hujjaj_, by making sale and barter of relics, by turning the holy places into marts of trade. All this is well known throughout Islam. Ah, the degenerate breed of the sons of the Prophet!"

"That is true, Master. And what then?"

"Is it not a fact that they could not even safeguard the Kaukab el Durri from the hand of the Great Apostate Sheik? How much less, then, could they protect their other and more sacred things, if some Shiah dog should come to rob them of the things they value?

"Would it not be better that such things should be carried far from danger, to the hidden, inner city? I ask thee this, Rrisa; would it not be better far?"

"And what is the meaning of my master's strange words?" ventured Rrisa, a sort of dazed horror dawning in his eyes. "The other and more sacred things of Islam--are they there under that cloth, O Master?"

"Thou hast said it, Rrisa! Now, behold them!"

With a quick, dramatic gesture, well-calculated to strike at the roots of the superst.i.tious Arab's nature, he flung away the blanket. To Rrisa's horrified gaze appeared the Myzab and the sacred Black Stone.

"_Ya Allah!_" gulped the orderly, in a choking whisper. His face became a dull gray. His eyes, rimmed with white, stared in terror. His teeth began to chatter; and on his forehead appeared little glistening drops.

"O Master, that is not--."

"Truly, yea! The Golden Waterspout, Rrisa, and the Black Stone itself! I am carrying them to the Very Heavenly City, far in the Iron Mountains! They shall be given to the Great Olema, there, who is more fit to guard and keep them than the Sheriff of Mecca or than his sons Feisal and the two Alis. No harm shall befall them, and--"

"And your hand--the hands of other Feringi who are not my masters--have touched these things?" stammered Rrisa. "O my calamity!

O my grief!"

"Thou canst go now, Rrisa," the Master said. "Go, and think well of what I have told thee, and--"

But Rrisa, falling p.r.o.ne to the metal of the cabin floor, facing the Black Stone, gave vent to his feelings and burst into a wild cry of "_La Illaha_--" and the rest of the immemorial formula.

The Master smiled down at him, quizzical and amused yet still more than a little affected by the terror and devotion of his orderly.

Wise, he waited till Rrisa had made the compulsory prayers of _Labbayk, Takbir_, and _Tahiti_, as all Moslems must do when coming near the Black Stone. Then, as the orderly's voice suddenly died away, he bent and laid a hand on the quivering Arab's shoulder.

"Come, come, Rrisa," said he, not unkindly. "Be thou not so distressed. Is it not better that these very precious things be kept in greater safety at the Jannati Shahr? Come, Rrisa! Arise!"

The orderly made no move, uttered no sound. The Master dragged him up, held him, peered into his face that had gone quite ashen under its brown.

"Why, Lord! the man has fainted dead away!" exclaimed the Master. He gathered Rrisa in his powerful arms, carried him to his own cabin and laid him in the berth, there; then he bathed his face with water and chafed his hands and throat.

In a few minutes, Rrisa's eyes vaguely opened. He gulped, gasped, made shift to speak a few feeble words.

"Master!" he whispered.

"Well, what dost thou wish?"

"One favor, only!"

"And what is that?"

"Leave me, a little while. I must be alone, all alone with Allah--to think!"