red radiance of the lost jewels began to beckon him again—to shine like a false marsh-light luring him to destruction.
That incomparable loveliness. . . the light and warmth of the whole world was imprisoned in those stones!
He forgot Isaac Volk. . . he forgot past perils. . . he forgot the almost superhuman strength and cunning of Buzak his enemy.
He only remembered that Buzak had pursued him, had deprived him of a treasure he held dearer than life, and was bearing this treasure farther and farther away from him every passing minute.
Gissing's fear dropped from him like a cloak.
"I will track him as he tracked me," he resolved. "I will find him and kill him before he reaches his desert city, and the jewels shall be mine. . . mine once more."
2
It was a transformed Gissing who disembarked at Algiers and took train for a little white-walled city on the edge of the desert.
Transformed outwardly by a beard and spectacles, a tweed suit of remarkable design, gaiters, thick boots, and a greenish velour hat with a feather stuck in its band, he was the picture of an untravelled tourist from the land of Wagner and beer.
But inwardly the transformation was far more devastating. The whole character of the man was altered astoundingly from that of the Gissing who had skulked, shivering with fear, into that pawn-shop in Blcecker Street only three short weeks ago.
An alienist would have realized that here was a man whose reason tottered to a fall; a man obsessed and driven by a fixed idea; a man who had ceased to reflect or consider, and was rushing in blind hurrying circles toward the center of that whirlpool which would presently engulf him into its vortex of insanity and death.
His fear of Buzak was utterly swamped by the overmastering fury of desire which drove him like a demon. Blind, thwarted, sick desire which reached out to his lost treasure and burned up the obstacles in his way, as a devouring flame licks up wood and straw.
The following evening Gissing made
his way through the high-walled tortuous
ways of the city until he stood
before a nail-studded door which was
very familiar to him. He lifted its heavy
iron knocker, and, after a short interval,
the door was opened to him. There was a
swift question, an answer, and an exclamation
in joyous guttural Arabic, as
the door was held wide open for Gissing
to enter.
It was fully an hour before he re-emerged, wrapped in a voluminous burnous with the hood drawn well down over his head and face, completely hiding the strange dress and mask he wore beneath. It was the Dress of Ceremony which every member of the Black Camels wore when assembling for any public function. At these meetings, brother disguised himself from brother as cautiously as from an enemy, and they were known to each other by numbers only. Even Buzak, the Arch-devil of them all, mingled with the lesser brethren as a number too, and no man could say what that number was.
Buzak alone held the key to each brother's identity, and that was why Gissing had skilfully altered the Arabic numerals sewn in silver thread on the veil he wore, and was now 901.
He had to risk the possibility of the genuine 901 being present at the gathering for which he was bound, but his whole life was now one gigantic risk—details did not worry him!
