family and that his bringing it here, back to Tamerlanistan, was considered a good omen by these superstitious people.
But—what was the other blade?
Too, who was this mad old Oriental in Coal Yard Street, near Drury Lane, who had lent him money on the sword and had sent him, indirectly, with that cryptic note to the house in the Colootallah where he had seen the princess?
Was he perhaps Hajji Akhbar Khan, the dead Ameer's prime minister, the Itizad el-Dowleh, of whom he heard whispers now and then, and who, shortly before his master's death, had gone to Europe on some secret mission?
And what then was the answer to it all?
How did this puzzle picture of twisted, painted, crazy Asian life dovetail into a whole?
For it did dovetail—to everybody's satisfaction, except his own. The very gipsies and donkey boys and beggars and dervishes seemed to accept it.
He would have asked Aziza Nurmahal. He trusted her implicitly, and liked her just as he would have liked some wholesome English “county” girl whose interests were entirely taken up with bringing baskets to the aged and ailing villagers, playing croquet on the curate's lawn, and going for a run with the harrier hounds, in short skirts and puttees.
Even if he had not been in love with Jane Warburton, Aziza Nurmahal would have had no sex appeal, no emotional message, for him.
He simply liked her. Liked her tremendously, and he would have asked her, as he might a pal:
