CHAPTER XV

"El Sareuk, are you sure you want to do this?" Godwin said anxiously, as he stood in the shadow of the building's north side and plucked tufts of fur out in search of an elusive flea. "There's small danger, true, but your dignity!"

The Saracen turned on him the face of a natural-born but long-frustrated thespian. "I would cut down the man who presumed to keep me from it," he said loftily.

"Very well. Be careful, venerable wolf. Remember that I don't know how fast this hulking body can run."

"I shall be as circumspect and as wily as the hungry small jackal."

"Then go to it, and Godspeed!"

El Sareuk peered round the corner of Mufaddal's house. The facade was a hundred and fifty feet long, and the door was set in the very center, with four Turcomans to guard it. He cleared his throat as though he were going to give a speech, hiked up his robes, and went bounding out to the dock, which ran parallel to the front of the house and a little more than ten yards from it.

The soldiers were chatting among themselves, and did not notice his advent on the dock, nor whence he came.

At once he began to croon, as if singing himself songs, and to leap up and down, ruffling his rose samite and blue silken robes out like broken wings, spreading his black Bedouin cloak by twirling as fast as a dervish, all the time mowing and grinning like a demented thing. The four turned from their conversation and stared at him. He appeared to see them for the first time, and diving forward with his head down like a battering ram, rocketed forward almost into their midst.

Two of them drew scimitars, but one of the others said angrily, "Seest thou not he is afflicted of Allah?" They put up their weapons, shame-faced.

He began to do a jig, little by little drawing away to the south so that they wheeled to watch him. Over their shoulders he saw the blunt skull of the gorilla poke round the corner. It was his last chance to ham it up. He doubled over and gave his feet a flip and was standing on his head, all the while singing a rather tuneless song of his own composition, about the amours of a pascha, to drown out any noise that Godwin might make.

One of the men cried, "Look, brothers, look! He wears gold-washed armor beneath his robes!"

They drew their scimitars, for no idiot of the byways of Alexandria wore the armor of a prince.

* * * * *

Godwin covered the seventy feet in six bounds. Two of the men he clutched by an ear apiece and knocked their heads together, almost a gesture in passing, a thing to be done without thinking. Before the clang of their helmets had died away he was doing the same to the other pair. His new frame was, as El Sareuk had said, far more potent even than the human body which had stood up many a time to thirty opponents. The quartet lay stretched on the ground, gray ooze and red blood spilling from their broken skulls.

And so he had eight scimitars, nine knives, and six sets of body armor, together with six helmets. "Not so bad," said he, as his men stripped the corpses. "Now for the house!"

Those Saracens who were dressed as Mufaddal's men went first into the house. Godwin followed, with El Sareuk (whose yen for acting was now glutted) and the forty-seven others, the Crusaders and Bedouins, treading on his heels. No one opposed them in the cool hall.

Godwin considered. Then, "Fan out," he whispered loudly, so that they all heard him, "and search the house. Slay all you find save women. El Sareuk, pick two Englishmen and two Bedouins and come with me."

Straight for the room of the card-players he went, his huge gray-black body speeding like a falcon's flight, with the five behind having trouble in keeping up with him. Through one room, in which five men sat eating, he raged silently; and before their astonishment at seeing such a brute appear in a civilized household would let them yell, they were dead on the parquet floor. Scimitars dripped gore and the gorilla's paws and thick trunk-like arms were spatted with it. Then they reached the room they sought.

Yes, they were still at the cards, even as he had hoped. Ramizail's game had held them fascinated, though Mufaddal had had to send out for more cash and gems half a dozen times. Surely, thought Godwin, surveying them for one fleeting moment from the doorway, surely this girl was as clever as the wisest sage in England! She had known that he would make good use of the dagger she had smuggled and the hours she had won him.

Heraj, luckily, had his back to the door. Ramizail and Mufaddal himself faced it. Pepi had retired to a corner to snore, while the third sorcerer, Habu, had taken his place.

Mufaddal was squinting at his hand. He had four aces, but if his usual luck held, either Ramizail or Heraj would have a straight flush. Seven times that night the accursed wench had taken a pot with a royal flush. Seven times! It seemed to him a rather high number. He was becoming a Poke Her fiend, nevertheless.

He looked up to lay a bet, and froze as his eyes met the small fierce orbs of the gorilla in the doorway. A coward would have screamed, but a man of Mufaddal's boasted courage would have sprung over the heads of the players to close with the beast.

Mufaddal screamed.