Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/102

that cordial good-fellowship. The bird of prey had laid aside his predatory manner and seemed really overjoyed about something; happiness, exaltation were mingled with his triumph.

"Don't thank me; thank my slim bank roll," I laughed, and swallowed the remnants of my disappointment.

"I have been hunting that piece for years," continued the stranger. "In Stamboul, Sultanabad, Tabriz . . . New York . . . London . . . wherever rugs are sold. And now I, or rather you, have found it. I regret your disappointment. But I had to have that rug," he concluded, speaking his last phrase in the tone of a bigoted Moslem announcing his belief in the unity of Allah.

"So I noted," was my reply; though it wasn't as ill-natured as it may sound.

"If you can spare the time, I shall tell you the story. And show you the other half of the rug. You knew, of course, that there was another half."

This was becoming interesting.

"I suspected as much; though who, and where——"

"I am Ilderim Shirkuh bin Ayyub," announced the stranger, and bowed in response to my acknowledgment of the introduction.

Ilderim Shirkuh bin Ayyub. Very impressive. But what of it?—though there was something familiar about that resonant handle.

He led the way to a car parked at the curbing.

During our drive north, bin Ayyub maintained a reflective silence that gave me a bit of time for my own thoughts. And as the long, aristocratic car purred its way toward the Gold Coast, I began to sense that I had indeed fallen into something. True, I had lost the prize I had sought to capture; but had I made the grad, I'd probably have remained in ignorance of its entire significance.

A few blocks past the Edgewater Beach Hotel we drew up before an ancient, bulky mansion set back of an acre of lawn; a great house, its dignity still overshadowing its approaching decrepitude; an outlaw, a rebel that still withstood the encroachment of apartments and apartment hotels.

A negro, arrayed in a striped kuftán, and wearing a massive, spirally twisted turban, ushered us into a dimly lit salon which, though almost bare of furniture, was magnificently carpeted and tapestried with ancient, lustrous Persian rugs. Clusters of arms and armor placed at intervals along the walls gleamed icily in the dull light of several great, brazen floor-lamps. It seemed almost sacrilege to tread on that magnificent palace carpet whose exquisite loveliness, framed by a border of hardwood floor, reminded me of a diamond set off by its background of onyx.

bin Ayyub finally broke the silence he had maintained; for as we entered, he had with a gesture invited me to be seated, he himself remaining on his feet, preoccupied, regarding the precious fragment he had captured, looking at it as though all the splendor about him was cheap and tawdry in comparison to that threadbare, eroded scrap he held in his hands.

"Unintentionally—and involuntarily also—you have done me a great service," he at last began, as he seated himself. As I told you, I am Ilderim Shirkuh bin Ayyub."

Again he paused, as if to let that impressive title sink home. And as I saw him against that background of lustrous rugs and damascened simitars and armor, I wondered whether I had been wrong in having omitted a salaam.

Bin Ayyub turned to the negro and—