"Salaam, Excellency."
"Thou art come on the business of thy master?"
"Who is my master, Excellency?"
"Till yesterday it was Claridge Pasha. Hast thou then forsaken him in his
trouble--the rat from the sinking ship?"
A flush passed over Ebn Ezra Bey's face, and his mouth opened with a gasp
of anger. Oriental though he was, he was not as astute as this Armenian
Christian, who was purposely insulting him, that he might, in a moment of
heat, snatch from him the business he meant to lay before Kaid. Nahoum
had not miscalculated.
"I have but one master, Excellency," Ebn Ezra answered quietly at last,
"and I have served him straightly. Hast thou done likewise?"
"What is straight to thee might well be crooked to me, effendi."
"Thou art crooked as the finger of a paralytic."
"Yet I have worked in peace with Claridge Pasha for these years past,
even until yesterday, when thou didst leave him to his fate."
"His ship will sail when thine is crumbling on the sands, and all thou
art is like a forsaken cockatrice's nest.
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