Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/153

geranium and saying in Arabic that "the sword of worry and despair has entered the buffalo's soul."

Perhaps it was coincidence that during the next four weeks, while spring burst into the full flower of summer, while Washington and West and Rector Streets began to shimmer with a great, brittle heat that danced about the heaped wares of the Armenian shops with cutting rays, that touched the ramshackle, drab houses and the dust-choked gutters with points of glittering gold, that steeped the open doors of the stores with black splotches like bottomless hollows and wove over everything a crooked, checkered pattern of intolerable orange and crimson—that during four long weeks Mohammed Yar attended strictly to his duties as Doctor El-Touati's factotum and never once found time to call on Zado Krelekian.

Perhaps it was an accident that, when finally he did go to the other's house, he kept himself at a little, well-marked distance and, with clumsy intent, did not see Zado's outstretched hand.

Lastly, it was perhaps by accident that when, after a sharp pause and struggle, he did shake the other's hand, that same hand was suddenly withdrawn with a little cry of pain.

"Something scratched my palm," said Zado Krelekian.

Apologetically the Kurd pointed at the sharp edge of his cuff.

"I am sorry," he smiled, at the same time rapidly dropping into his side pocket a little crystal-tipped needle.

That day it was not the Kurd who inquired after the Armenian's health, but the latter who spoke of it voluntarily, hectically, the words tumbling out of his