Farrell slipped past, and toward Antoinette's divan. "Out of my way, O shamelessly Besotted!" growled the Kurd, pausing to nudge the body with his toe. During that instant Farrell found what he sought; and as the Kurd decided to ignore the supposed sot, the steel skewer drove home, its point projecting beyond his shoulders. "Sorry, old man," muttered Farrell as he regarded the Kurd twitching and coughing his life out in a bloody foam. Then he rapidly searched the body. He found no weapons. "Disarm 'em when they come in here ... leaves me handicapped...." He thrust Shirkuh's knife into the hand of the dying Kurd and closed the fingers about it. Then he guided the hand of Shirkuh and clenched it about the blunt end of the skewer. "This may save the day," he explained to Antoinette. "Remember, they fought and killed each other. That may give me a long enough lease on life to come back and get you out of this hell's hole, or get word to Pierre. Now I've got to go out into the Garden and do some quick thinking. Something else may turn up ... no, I can't stay here with you ... and I've got to leave the bodies where they are." Then, as he kissed her, "Hang on. There's still a chance for you. Maybe for us." He strode out into the Garden, and washed his blood-stained hands at the fountain. The Eurasian girl had not yet returned with the replenished flagon. And as Farrell glanced about, looking for her, and preparing to divert her from any thought of her former companion, Musa the mute negro approached with a jar on his shoulder and a cup in his hand. This, Farrell surmised, would be the end of the visit to Paradise. The negro would administer a sleeping-potion; the devoted ones would drink, and upon awakening would find themselves lying in the _majlis_, mysteriously translated from the empyrean realm of the Lord Hassan, and ready for whatever butcheries he could assign them. As Musa offered him the cup, Farrell extended his own flagon, saying, "Fill this one, Father of Blackness. That cup of yours is too small." The negro grinned, emptied the cup into the larger vessel, and went his way to minister to the other guests. The Eurasian beauty, who returned at that moment, was easily diverted, so that Farrell contrived to spill most of the drugged wine over his shirt-front and into the fountain. Then, as he saw the _fedawi_ succumb to the effects of the drug, he himself lurched forward, feigning unconsciousness. "No chance to look around ... no chance of cutting my way out," he reflected as he thought of Antoinette and her ghastly companions. "And maybe the Shirkuh versus drunken Kurd formation will hold water long enough to give me time to qualify as an assassin and be sent out to do a bit of slaying!" The negro was making the rounds, taking the _fedawi_ one by one from the Garden. He picked Farrell from the paving as though he were a bag of meal, shouldered him, and deposited him on the divan in the anteroom, beside his drugged companions.