Achmed Abdullah

“ India is only an imperial suburb after all. It's just around the corner from Belgravia and Bond Street and Marlborough House. I—oh—I am mixed up in a scandal over here, and every scandal that reeks in the London Westend stinks to heaven by the time it reaches Calcutta and some deputy assistant commissioner's mother-in-law's ear—and tongue. I have not the fluttering ghost of a chance in India.”
“India is not the only land East of Suez,” the other rejoined gently.
“I know. But it is the only part of Asia where I would fit in. ”

“ She turned to the nurse.
“Since thou dost not agree with me in the matter of the concessions, and since thou art too old to be beaten and since I love thee too dearly to give thee the point of the sword when it is red, I shall send thee back to the harem, where thou belongest. Thou art no longer regent—no longer the Shadow of the Queen. But thou shalt live out thy life in the shadow of the queen's affection.”
By this time, Gulabian, the Armenian, had regained the insolent, wheedling resiliency of his race. ”

“ And, tightly pressing her lips together, her heart writhing in revolt at her own unwomanly brutality, she stepped down from the peacock throne and dealt blow after blow with her sword, right, left, indiscriminately, pricking, slashing, cutting, wounding ...
And the reaction on the mob was instantaneous, and typical.
For these men were Asians; men inherently callous; men devoid of that weakening outgrowth of the imagination which the Occident calls sympathy; men in whom ruthlessness and cruelty excite a certain kind of admiration as a conspicuous and unmistakable exhibition of energy. ”

“ Her left hand clutched the scepter of the Gengizkhani, while her right was about the hilt of the straight, simple sword that had rested across the knees of the dead Ameer during the funeral procession, and the soul of the naked steel seemed to reach out and touch her own soul, to sluice it with an ancient and crunching energy.
“Right or wrong,” she said, “I have decided. I do not want to grant concessions. I do not want the money of the foreigners without the advice of the Itizad el-Dowleh. It is wicked money—money that fills our ears with the raucous clamor of strife ...” ”

“ Ali Yusuf Khan's words came out with a tremendous, cold enthusiasm. “The blade!” he repeated, in a hushed, flat voice.
He picked the weapon up and pressed it to his lips.
“The blade will never fail you, saheb,” he went on, “though men will and women may. Its soul is old—old and wise and strong and just a little cruel—and loyal, for it came out of Asia. The rest ... man and woman—your friends? What do they matter? For you know the ancient Persian saying: 'Let none confide in the sea, nor in whatever has horns or claws, or who carries deadly weapons ”

“ Striking a simon-pure romantic note, showing, as it does, or rather tries to do, that a blade can have a soul. Also giving another glimpse of the charming young Oriental princess whom the reader has doubtless forgotten by this time.
Years later, when The Honorable Hector Wade spoke of that period of his eventful life, he would add, by way of ruminating, psychological commentary, that the home-spun self-possession in which he considered Ali Yusuf Khan's offer was really the strangest part of the whole incident. ”

“ The whole sordid, miserable affair was only a few days old, and I hadn't been in London more than seven or eight hours. But you know how it is, how you don't meet people when you want to meet them, and how they seem to pop out of the nowhere when you want to avoid them. ”

“ You can sidestep contempt by shutting up. But pity ... Why, it leaves you helpless.
“And then Ali Yusuf Khan's offer. As much money as I wanted, and yet it did not seem like charity. It seemed perfectly proper, and sort of on the cards, you see, preordained. Kismet, and all that, that at a moment's notice, at midnight, a few doors from Drury Lane, a mysterious incarnation out of the Arabian Nights whom I had never seen before should offer to lend me an exorbitant sum on a dusty old sword whose blade and hilt was inlaid with a blurred gold pattern. Rum, don't you think?” ”

“ And a shiver of apprehension ran through the crowd, while from a far corner of the hall where he had stood a motionless onlooker, dressed in motley black and scarlet, his immense hands crossed on the hilt of his beheading ax, the executioner, a gigantic, plum-colored negro, stalked forward with a sinister majesty of movement.
“Wahab al-Shaitan,” continued the princess, “thou art regent until further orders. Rawan-i-Sultana, 'Killer for the Queen,' shall be thy honorable title. Thy motto shall be: 'Do not trust the living ”