Most of the
furious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanatics
remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.
CHAPTER XXXI
EAST AGAINST WEST
The major, peering down through the trap, swore luridly. Leclair
muttered something to himself, with wrinkled brow. "Captain Alden's"
eyes blinked strangely, through the holes of the mask. The others
stared in frank astonishment.
"What the devil, sir--?" began the major; but the chief held up
his hand for silence. Again he spoke whisperingly into the strange
apparatus. This time a murmur rose to him; a murmur increasing to a
confused tumult, that in an angry wave of malediction beat up about
Nissr as she hung there with spinning helicopters, over the city.
The Master smiled as he put up the receiver in the little box and
closed the door with a snap. Regretfully he shook his head.
"These Arabic gentlemen, _et al_," he remarked, "don't seem agreeably
disposed to treat with us on a basis of exchanging the Sheik Abd el
Rahman for what we want from them. My few remarks in Arabic, via this
etheric megaphone, seem to have met a rebuff. Every man in the Haram,
the minarets, the arcade, and the radiating streets heard every word I
said, gentlemen, as plainly as if I had spoken directly into his ear.
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