rug from Samarcand, but resorting even to express trucks to carry it the last step toward capturing the forgetful one. . . .
All this Diane knew without knowing why she knew: and it seemed so reasonable that there was nothing incongruous in shuddering and saying as she often had, "I'm afraid of the damned things. . . ."
As the door clicked behind the departing expressman, Clarke clipped the leaden seals of the cylindrical bale, cut its stitching, and thrilled at the thought of the rug he was about to unwrap; for the bale was from Siraganian of New York, who by dint of persistent reaching into the East must finally have succeeded in executing Clarke's impossible order.
A tawny, golden silkiness smiled from the gaping burlap sheath.
Just a glimpse of that wonder in buff and cream, with its lotus-bud border, and frets and meanders in blue and coral and peach, told Clarke that this of all things was as far as possible from what he had ordered Siraganian to get, cost what it might. For in place of Persian intricacies in deep wine reds and solemn green, florid magnificence that Isphahan had given to the world before the splendor died, Clarke was confronted by an ancient rug from Samarcand—silken Samarcand in the valley of Zarabshan—thick-napped and luxurious, mysterious with its Mongolian cloud bands and asymmetrical corner pieces, bats and dragons, and five-medallioncd firmaments of blue that could come from none but the vats of Turkestan.
"Good God! It's silk!" marveled Clarke as he stroked the lustrous pile. "Silk, and by the Rod, on a linen warp!"
He wondered how Siraganian could have made that incredible mistake, sending him such a rug in place of what he had ordered. If it were a case of sending something just as good—an unheard-of procedure with that Armenian merchant-prince—he certainly had been crafty enough, for no connoisseur who once touched that rich pile, whose eyes were once dazzled by those insinuant colors, whose senses were stricken by the sorcery of cabalistical designs, could ever return it and say that he had ordered something else. Rather would he thank Siraganian for his error.
A silk pile on a warp of blue linen, and woven in the days when Persian Hafiz was called to account by that fierce Mongol for a verse wherein the poet bartered the prince's favorite cities, Samarcand and Bokhara, for the smile of a Turki dancing girl, and the mole on her left breast; unbelievable fortune had sent him this incredible rug.
And then Clarke's wondering, triumphant eyes clouded as he thought of a girl beside whom Samarcand and Bokhara were but the tinkle of brazen anklets—a very long time ago, when there was no Diane, when Clarke pursued rugs for that same Siraganian who now sought them for Clarke.
"Egher an Turki bedest ared dili mara" muttered Clarke, forgetting all but the glamorous perils that had lured him far into lost cities and high adventure. Hafiz was right.
And for a moment the rug from Samarcand, its five by seven feet of tawny, silken perfection putting to confusion the priceless Feraghan on which it had been unrolled, gleamed unregarded as Clarke's mind whirled to the sonorous accent with which the divine Hafiz had enslaved the East and its savage conquerors.
"Egher an Turki"
Strange, how after all this time one would remember. It must be that one could never quite forget.
