"What about me, then?" he was saying. "Am I cleared? Am I not going
to be cleared?"
"I believe and hope," answered Fisher, "that you are not going to be
suspected. But you are certainly not going to be cleared. There must
be no suspicion against him, and therefore no suspicion against you.
Any suspicion against him, let alone such a story against him, would
knock us endways from Malta to Mandalay. He was a hero as well as a
holy terror among the Moslems. Indeed, you might almost call him a
Moslem hero in the English service. Of course he got on with them
partly because of his own little dose of Eastern blood; he got it
from his mother, the dancer from Damascus; everybody knows that."
"Oh," repeated Boyle, mechanically, staring at him with round eyes,
"everybody knows that."
"I dare say there was a touch of it in his jealousy and ferocious
vengeance," went on Fisher. "But, for all that, the crime would ruin
us among the Arabs, all the more because it was something like a
crime against hospitality. It's been hateful for you and it's pretty
horrid for me. But there are some things that damned well can't be
done, and while I'm alive that's one of them."
"What do you mean?" asked Boyle, glancing at him curiously. "Why
should you, of all people, be so passionate about it?"
Horne Fisher looked at the young man with a baffling expression.
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