On the other side is a mud wall. There
are many other graves about, but they are all asleep. This is _the_
grave, because it is awake, and is moist and not sandy.”

“I thought so,” said Weston, “It is Abdul’s grave he is talking about.”

“There is a red moon sitting on the desert,” continued Machmout, “and it
is now. There is the puffing of khamseen, and much dust coming. The moon
is red with dust, and because it is low.”

“Still sensitive to external conditions,” said Weston. “That is rather
curious. Pinch him, will you?”

I pinched Machmout; he did not pay the slightest attention. “In the last house of the street, and in the doorway stands a man. Ah! ah!” cried the boy suddenly, “it is the Black Magic he knows. Don’t let
him come. He is going out of the house,” he shrieked, “he is coming--no,
he is going the other way, towards the moon and the grave. He has the
Black Magic with him, which can raise the dead, and he has a murdering
knife, and a spade. I cannot see his face for the Black Magic is between
it and my eyes.”

Weston had got up, and, like me, was hanging on Machmout’s words. “We will go there,” he said. “Here is an opportunity of testing it. Listen a moment.”

“He is walking, walking, walking,” piped Machmout, “still walking to the
moon and the grave. The moon sits no longer on the desert, but has
sprung up a little way.”

I pointed out of the window. “That at any rate is true,” I said. Weston took the cloth out of Machmout’s hand, and the piping ceased. In
a moment he stretched himself, and rubbed his eyes. “Khalás,” he said. “Yes, it is Khalás.”

“Did I tell you of the sitt in England?” he asked. “Yes, oh, yes,” I answered; “thank you, little Machmout. The White Magic
was very good to-night. Get you to bed.”

Machmout trotted obediently out of the room, and Weston closed the door
after him. “We must be quick,” he said. “It is worth while going and giving the
thing a chance, though I wish he had seen something less gruesome. The
odd thing is that he was not at the funeral, and yet he describes the
grave accurately. What do you make of it?”

“I make that the White Magic has shown Machmout that somebody with
black magic is going to Abdul’s grave, perhaps to rob it,” I answered
resolutely. “What are we to do when we get there?” asked Weston. “See the Black Magic at work. Personally I am in a blue funk. So are
you.”

“There is no such thing as Black Magic,” said Weston. “Ah, I have it. Give me that orange.”

Weston rapidly skinned it, and cut from the rind two circles as big as a
five shilling piece, and two long, white fangs of skin. The first he
fixed in his eye, the two latter in the corners of his mouth. “The spirit of Black Magic?” I asked. “The same.”

He took up a long black burnous and wrapped it round him. Even in the
bright lamp light, the spirit of black magic was a sufficiently terrific
personage. “I don’t believe in black magic,” he said, “but others do. If it is
necessary to put a stop to--to anything that is going on, we will hoist
the man on his own petard. Come along. Whom do you suspect it is--I
mean, of course, who was the person you were thinking of when your
thoughts were transferred to Machmout.”

“What Machmout said,” I answered, “suggested Achmet to me.”

Weston indulged in a laugh of scientific incredulity, and we set off. The moon, as the boy had told us, was just clear of the horizon, and as
it rose higher, its colour at first red and sombre, like the blaze of
some distant conflagration, paled to a tawny yellow. The hot wind from
the south, blowing no longer fitfully but with a steadily increasing
violence was thick with sand, and of an incredibly scorching heat, and
the tops of the palm trees in the garden of the deserted hotel on the
right were lashing themselves to and fro with a harsh rattle of dry
leaves. The cemetery lay on the outskirts of the village, and, as long
as our way lay between the mud walls of the huddling street, the wind
came to us only as the heat from behind closed furnace doors. Every now
and then with a whisper and whistle rising into a great buffeting flap,
a sudden whirlwind of dust would scour some twenty yards along the road,
and then break like a shore-quenched wave against one or other of the
mud walls or throw itself heavily against a house and fall in a shower
of sand. But once free of obstructions we were opposed to the full heat
and blast of the wind which blew full in our teeth. It was the first
summer khamseen of the year, and for the moment I wished I had gone
north with the tourist and the quail and the billiard marker, for
khamseen fetches the marrow out of the bones, and turns the body to
blotting paper. We passed no one in the street, and the only sound we
heard, except the wind, was the howling of moonstruck dogs. The cemetery is surrounded by a tall mud-built wall, and sheltering for
a few moments under this we discussed our movements. The row of
tamarisks close to which the tomb lay went down the centre of the
graveyard, and by skirting the wall outside and climbing softly over
where they approached it, the fury of the wind might help us to get near
the grave without being seen, if anyone happened to be there. We had
just decided on this, and were moving on to put the scheme into
execution, when the wind dropped for a moment, and in the silence we
could hear the chump of the spade being driven into the earth, and what
gave me a sudden thrill of intimate horror, the cry of the
carrion-feeding hawk from the dusty sky just overhead. Two minutes later we were creeping up in the shade of the tamarisks, to
where Abdul had been buried. The great green beetles which live on the
trees were flying about blindly, and once or twice one dashed into my
face with a whirr of mail-clad wings. When we were within some twenty
yards of the grave we stopped for a moment, and, looking cautiously out
from our shelter of tamarisks, saw the figure of a man already waist
deep in the earth, digging out the newly turned grave. Weston, who was
standing behind me had adjusted the characteristics of the spirit of
Black Magic so as to be ready for emergencies, and turning round
suddenly, and finding myself unawares face to face with that realistic
impersonation, though my nerves are not precariously strong, I could
have found it within me to shriek aloud. But that unsympathetic man of
iron only shook with suppressed laughter, and, holding the eyes in his
hand, motioned me forward again without speaking to where the trees grew
thicker. There we stood not a dozen yards away from the grave. We waited, I suppose, for some ten minutes, while the man, whom we saw
to be Achmet, toiled on at his impious task. He was entirely naked, and
his brown skin glistened with the dews of exertion in the moonlight. At
times he chattered in a cold uncanny manner to himself, and once or
twice he stopped for breath.