“Spare your regrets. It was my fault. I should have told Djenane Hanoum of its value.”

He took the rug with a listlessness that amazed me, and, moving as one suddenly aroused from sound sleep, spread it across a couch.

“I feared—”

“That I suspected you?” interrupted bin Ayyub. “No. I knew you were not guilty. You know who is guilty; but since he must be one who has eaten your bread and salt, I cannot ask you to betray him.”

Bin Ayyub seemed to forget that I was not bound by the Moslem’s belief in the sanctity of bread and salt. But now that I had returned the rug, why bother about the trickster, Revell?

“Nor have I time to hunt him,” continued bin Ayyub. “I have been waiting for you to return Saladin’s throne-rug. And now that that is done, I have little time for hunting him.”

“But now there’s no need of hunting him,” I suggested. “You have your rug.”

Which I fancied was a sensible answer. But the look that flitted across bin Ayyub’s face and took form in his eyes told me that my remark had been the thrust of incandescent iron.

Bin Ayyub rose. I wondered if this was to terminate the interview. It seemed that he might at least have thanked me, despite my having been the cause of his annoyance.

“I have dismissed Saoud for the day. But I myself will prepare coffee. One moment, please.”

The aura of unbounded misery and corroding despair remained, lingering after the portières had hidden bin Ayyub from sight. Not even the clanging of the brazen pestle wherewith he pulverized the freshly roasted coffee could infuse a trace of life into the somber magnificence of that rich salon. The order of nature had been upset: this was the house of one whose spirit had died a thousand deaths without having deprived the body of life. Not even the return of the throne-rug had aroused a sparkle of the vital, predatory spirit of that fierce Kurd whose eyes had but two weeks ago flamed exultantly as he told of the enemy who had unwisely walked by moonlight.

Bin Ayyub’s entry with a tray interrupted my reflections.

One of the tiny eggshell cups was white, the other, deep blue.

“No, effendi, blue is the color of mourning; take the white one.”

A light began to dawn on me. The color of mourning … he had taken this tactful way of letting me know that my presence was an intrusion on his sorrow. But, if there had been a death in the family, why that flash of abysmal despair when a few moments ago I had suggested that since he once more had the throne-rug, he need not bother to hunt whoever it was that had tricked Djenane Hanoum?