Publisher's Synopsis
THE PHANTOM SCIMITAR I was not the only passenger aboard the S.S. Mandalay who perceived the disturbance and wondered what it might portend and from whence proceed. A goodly number of passengers were joining the ship at Port Said. I was lounging against the rail, pipe in mouth, lazily wondering, with a large vagueness. What a heterogeneous rabble it was!-a brightly coloured rabble, but the colours all were dirty, like the town and the canal. Only the sky was clean; the sky and the hard, merciless sunlight which spared nothing of the uncleanness, and defied one even to think of the term dear to tourists, "picturesque." I was in that kind of mood. All the natives appeared to be pockmarked; all the Europeans greasy with perspiration. But what was the stir about? I turned to the dark, bespectacled young man who leaned upon the rail beside me. From the first I had taken to Mr. Ahmad Ahmadeen. "There is some kind of undercurrent of excitement among the natives," I said, "a sort of subdued Greek chorus is audible. What's it all about?" Mr. Ahmadeen smiled. After a gaunt fashion, he was a handsome man and had a pleasant smile. "Probably," he replied, "some local celebrity is joining the ship." I stared at him curiously. "Any idea who he is?" (The soul of the copyhunter is a restless soul.) A group of men dressed in semi-European fashion-that is, in European fashion save for their turbans, which were green-passed close to us along the deck.
