"Even after the assurance of one of my most trusted servants," the
toneless voice continued, with no mark of any emotion save a slightly
rising note, "you insisted on releasing my most deadly enemy. Be more
circumspect in the future."
"I saved your life!" I said angrily.
"And for that reason alone I overlook your mistake--this time!"
A slow fury suddenly surged up in me.
"This time! Make the best of it this time, for I assure you there will
be no next time. I owe you a greater debt than I can ever hope to pay,
but that does not make me your slave. I have saved your life--the debt
is as near paid as a man can pay it. Go your way and I go mine!"
A low, hideous laugh answered me, like a reptilian hiss.
"You fool! You will pay with your whole life's toil! You say you are
not my slave? I say you are--just as black Hassim there beside you is
my slave--just as the girl Zuleika is my slave, who has bewitched you
with her beauty."
These words sent a wave of hot blood to my brain and I was conscious of
a flood of fury which completely engulfed my reason for a second. Just
as all my moods and senses seemed sharpened and exaggerated those days,
so now this burst of rage transcended every moment of anger I had ever
had before.
"Hell's fiends!" I shrieked. "You devil--who are you and what is your
hold on me? I'll see you or die!"
Hassim sprang at me, but I hurled him backward and with one stride
reached the screen and flung it aside with an incredible effort of
strength. Then I shrank back, hands outflung, shrieking. A tall, gaunt
figure stood before me, a figure arrayed grotesquely in a silk brocaded
gown which fell to the floor.
From the sleeves of this gown protruded hands which filled me with
crawling horror--long, predatory hands, with thin bony fingers and
curved talons--withered skin of a parchment brownish-yellow, like the
hands of a man long dead.
The hands--but, oh God, the face! A skull to which no vestige of
flesh seemed to remain but on which taut brownish-yellow skin grew
fast, etching out every detail of that terrible death's-head. The
forehead was high and in a way magnificent, but the head was curiously
narrow through the temples, and from under penthouse brows great eyes
glimmered like pools of yellow fire. The nose was high-bridged and very
thin; the mouth was a mere colorless gash between thin, cruel lips.
A long, bony neck supported this frightful vision and completed the
effect of a reptilian demon from some mediæval hell.