"Well, Ali, I know what's the matter with you spiritually. You've been thinking too much of the things of this life--fighting, trading and so on. You've spread your mat and faced Mecca, and said your daily prayer in a formal sort of way, but you've been neglecting the moolah. You have been lax in your attendance at mosque, and for a fiver you aren't half the man at the Koran you used to be." "The Effendi is very wise." "I am. I can't help it." "He has hit upon this Believer's sin." "Dead on the spot. So now let's get to the point. In your ignorance, you believe that Allah sent all those crawling horrors that are in your wound?" "For His own wise purposes He sent them. Allah can do no wrong." "You are mixing up theological facts. Allah can do no wrong. But what about Sheitan?" "I spit upon his name, O Effendi," said Ali ben Hossein, and did it. "Hear now then the pronouncement of the Kaleef Abdul Hamed of I'Stamboul. The unclean things that haunt the wounds of the Faithful are no longer sent by Allah as a test of Faith. They are sent now by Sheitan as a torment to True Believers, and as an antidote, the Prophet, through the Kaleef, has sent a liquid of his own devising, of which by a happy chance I have a portion in the factory." "Is it green in color?" "Green as the skirts of the houris of Paradise," said Carter, and thanked heaven for a small parcel of aniline dyes (green amongst them) which had been sent by an enterprising Bradford dyeware merchant, to the order of a dyer in far off Kano. "Then," said Ali ben Hossein simply, "if you, O Effendi, can relieve me from the torments of Sheitan, from which I am suffering, I and my sons will remember your name in the fullest gratitude. Have you the holy liquid here?" "Not in my pocket, O Ali ben Hossein, for I am not a djinn. But there is a medicine chest up at the factory, and within it is a bottle of crystal, blue in color, in which are tabloids which bear the giaour name of perchloride of mercury. They and the aniline green may take a bit of finding, but presently when I've got a solution made, and tinted to a True Believer's taste, I will return here and work upon you that cure of which I am sure that the Kaleef Abdul would approve if he'd a thigh as bad as yours, and had ever heard of an antiseptic dressing. So see to it that you don't slip through the gates of Paradise whilst I am gone. D'you understand? The houris won't look twice at a Haûsa with a leg as worm-eaten as yours."