Now is the time for the Turk to start his little game of Oriental duplicity. Having but a faint idea of the manner in which Scutari intends to act, Aleck is, of course, deeply interested in the whole business. He and Wycherley have halted at a convenient distance, and watch for the spider to send his emissary forth. Just across the way is the room of the veiled fortune teller, though no flaming sign announces her presence, only the modest wording given before. That it is through her in some way the manipulator of wheat is to be trapped, Aleck does not doubt, and yet he cannot fully believe the woman is in league with Scutari. They only met two evenings before, and he seemed astonished at her presence in Cairo Street. Perhaps he has not seen her in these twenty years. Why should she enter into a league with the Turk--she has no reason to hate her former husband, and least of all should the mother conspire to throw her child into the hands of one she loathes. Of course the tricky Aroun knows how to utilize certain forces--he has made a study of woman, Turkish women at least, and believes he can bend them to his will. Through cunning, then, he may cause Marda to be the bait that will draw the foolish fly into the net. “Look!” says Wycherley. Samson is no longer alone. Standing at his side is an Arab boy--such a lad as races the donkeys up and down, and takes a fiendish pleasure in scaring old ladies half to death by shouting in their ear as his long-eared charge rubs against their arm in passing. This dark skinned youth rises on his toes to deliver a card to the American with the gray mustache, and then makes a low salaam, sweeping his arms in the direction of the wall, where over the narrow door and under the odd latticed balcony window one can read the sign of SAIDEE--THE VEILED FORTUNE TELLER. “What will he do with it?” mutters the irrepressible Wycherley in Aleck’s ears, but the intended joke is Greek to the Canadian, who, while half an American at heart, has never been educated up to the standard of American humor. “He reads it--see that start, that eager glance around. Well done, Samson, old boy. I’ll have you playing first walking gent in my traveling combination before you’re many moons older. Now his gaze is fastened on the door. He advances like a lamb to the slaughter, and hands in his little quarter. Shout, ye Turkish hosts, for the game is apparently won!” CHAPTER XXVIII. DOROTHY.