“And on thee, peace!” answered Mizraim, as Nahoum passed from the room, and walked hastily towards the hall where he should find Ebn Ezra Bey. Nearing the spot, he brought his step to a deliberate slowness, and appeared not to notice the stately Arab till almost upon him. “Salaam, effendi,” he said smoothly, yet with inquisition in his eye, with malice in his tone. “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.” “Is it this thou hast come to say to the Effendina?” “What I have come to say to the Effendina is for the world to know after it hath reached his ears. I know thee, Nahoum Pasha. Thou art a traitor. Claridge Pasha would abolish slavery, and thou dost receive great sums of gold from the slave-dealers to prevent it.” “Is it this thou wilt tell Kaid?” Nahoum asked with a sneer. “And hast thou proofs?” “Even this day they have come to my hands from the south.” “Yet I think the proofs thou hast will not avail; and I think that thou wilt not show them to Kaid. The gift of second thinking is a great gift. Thou must find greater reason for seeking the Effendina.” “That too shall be. Gold thou hadst to pay the wages of the soldiers of the south. Thou didst keep the gold and order the slave-hunt; and the soldiers of the Effendina have been paid in human flesh and blood--ten thousand slaves since Claridge Pasha left the Soudan, and three thousand dead upon the desert sands, abandoned by those who hunted them when water grew scarce and food failed. To-day shall see thy fall.” At his first words Nahoum had felt a shock, from which his spirit reeled; but an inspiration came to him on the moment; and he listened with a saturnine coolness to the passionate words of the indignant figure towering above him. When Ebn Ezra had finished, he replied quietly: “It is even as thou sayest, effendi. The soldiers were paid in slaves got in the slave-hunt; and I have gold from the slave-dealers. I needed it, for the hour is come when I must do more for Egypt than I have ever done.”