“Very practical jokes indeed!” said Charlie, growing rather red, while Cecil, glancing up into Sir Dugald’s impenetrable eyes, saw his eyebrows twitching at the corners. “Oh, Sir Dugald, you are joking!” she cried. “Not at all,” said Sir Dugald, sitting down in a long wicker chair and stretching himself luxuriously; “the joke is all on the side of the Pasha’s household, I assure you. Egerton’s leaving Baghdad was a joke of Azim Bey’s; so was his capture by the Kurds. His pretended death, your imprisonment, Miss Anstruther, and the attempt to marry you off to some native, were little jokes of the Kitchuk Khanum Effendi’s, got up in pure lightness of heart, just to relieve the monotony of harem existence. The Um-ul-Pasha shares in the family tastes, so she co-operated with her Excellency, and Karalampi acted as a kind of master of the revels, humouring the rest by lending his experience to make their play more real.” “I can’t make out that business about the native,” said Charlie, meditatively. “We are evidently meant to understand that he was a myth, and that the Um-ul-Pasha intended all along to play the part of a fairy godmother, and bring us together again. Is it so?” “Not a bit,” said Sir Dugald. “The fellow was a flesh-and-blood reality. I believe he is some relation to the Levantine woman who has done all the Um-ul-Pasha’s dirty work in this business.” “Mdlle. Katrina’s nephew!” cried Cecil, in mingled astonishment and disgust. “Yes, the plan was very complete,” said Sir Dugald. “And it was splendidly managed!” he cried, with the admiration of an accomplished artist for the masterpiece of a fellow-craftsman. “The way all the parts dovetail into one another is so good. Why, if it had not been for that utterly unexpected letter from Mrs Howard White, we might never have been the wiser! Just think of it, Miss Anstruther. There was Egerton up in the mountains, unable to escape or to communicate with me. There were you at Sardiyeh, miles away from Egerton in reality, and practically much more, since your gaolers were Turks and his Kurds. Still, you would have been pretty sure to have made inquiries and discovered where he was, and to have found some way of communicating with him, as long as you thought he was alive, so you had to believe him dead. That, again, was excellently done. To dress up some dead body in Egerton’s clothes, pitch it over the cliff, and show it to Hanna as his master’s, was very good, but it was still better to let him escape and tell his tale, and best of all to secure him and put him in safe keeping as soon as it was done. That disposed of both of you, besides working off Karalampi’s little grudges. He felt quite safe, for he had Azim Bey’s authority for a good deal, and he knew that he would not dare to say anything about it.” “But what was the good of it all?” said Charlie. “It seems rather aimless--so much trouble without any very important result.”