But Yusef was no longer to be trusted.
Possibly Feversham's accent betrayed him. The more likely conjecture is
that Yusef took Feversham for a spy, and thought it wise to be
beforehand and to confess to Mohammed-el-Kheir, the Emir, his own share
in the concealment of the letters. That, however, is a mere conjecture.
The important fact is this. On the same night Feversham went alone to
old Berber."
"Alone!" said Ethne. "Yes?"
"He found the house fronting a narrow alley, and the sixth of the row.
The front wall was destroyed, but the two side walls and the back wall
still stood. Three feet from the floor and two feet from the right-hand
corner the letters were hidden in that inner wall. Feversham dug into
the mud bricks with his knife; he made a hole wherein he could slip his
hand. The wall was thick; he dug deep, stopping now and again to feel
for the packet. At last his fingers clasped and drew it out; as he hid
it in a fold of his jibbeh, the light of a lantern shone upon him from
behind."
Ethne started as though she had been trapped herself. Those acres of
roofless fives-courts, with here and there a tower showing up against
the sky, the lonely alleys, the dead silence here beneath the stars, the
cries and the beating of drums and the glare of lights from the new
town, Harry Feversham alone with the letters, with, in a word, some
portion of his honour redeemed, and finally, the lantern flashing upon
him in that solitary place,--the scene itself and the progress of the
incidents were so visible to Ethne at that moment that even with the
feather in her open palm she could hardly bring herself to believe that
Harry Feversham had escaped.
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