Grim nodded to me from behind the Syrians’ backs, and I jumped at the offer.  Payment was refused.  The man explained that he had the room by the week and the loan of it to me for one night would cost him nothing.  In fact, he acted courteously and with considerable evidence of breeding, merely requesting my permission to lock the big closet where he kept his personal belongings and to take the key away with him.  Even if we had been in a mood to cavil it would have been difficult to find fault, for it was a spacious, clean and airy room—­three characteristics each of which is as scarce as the other in that part of the world.

The beds stood foot to foot along the right wall as you entered.  Against the opposite wall was a cheap wooden wash-stand and an enormous closet built of olive wood sunk into a deep recess.  The thing was about eight feet wide and reached to the ceiling; you couldn’t tell the depth because he locked it at once and pocketed the key, and it fitted into the recess so neatly that a knife-blade would hardly have gone into the crack.

Outside the bedroom door, in a lobby furnished with odds and ends, was a wickerwork sofa that would do finely for Narayan Singh, and that old soldier didn’t need to have it pointed out to him.  Without word or sign from us he threw his kit on the floor, unrolled his blankets, removed his boots, curled up on the sofa, and if he didn’t go to sleep at once, gave such a perfect imitation of it that somebody’s fox terrier came and sniffed him, and, recognizing a campaigner after his own wandering heart, jumped on his chest and settled down to sleep too.

As soon as our host had left the room, all bows and toothy smiles, Jeremy with his back to me drew from one pocket the letter he was supposed to have stolen from me, flourished it in Yussuf Dakmar’s face, and concealed it carefully in another.  Then a new humorous notion occurred to him.  He pulled it out again, folded it in the pocket wallet in which he had carried it from the first, wrapped the whole in a handkerchief, which he knotted carefully and then handed it to me.

“Effendi,” he said, “you are a fierce master and a mighty drunkard, but a man without guile.  Keep that till the morning.  Then, if Omar wants to steal it he will have to murder you instead of me, and I would rather sleep than die.  But you must give it back at dawn, because the prayers are in it that a very holy ma’lim wrote for me, and unless I read those prayers properly tomorrow’s train will come to grief before we reach Damascus.”

He acted the part perfectly of one of those half-witted, wholly shrewd mountebanks, who pick up a living by taking advantage of tolerance and good nature.  You’ve all seen the type.  It’s commonest at race-meetings but you’ll find it anywhere in the world where vagrant men of means foregather.

Again Yussuf Dakmar’s face became a picture of suppressed emotion.  I pocketed the wallet with the same matter-of-fact air with which I have accepted a servant’s money to keep safe for him scores of times.  He believed me to be a drunkard, who had been thoroughly doped that day and would probably drink hard that night to drown the after-taste.  It ought to be easy to rob me while I slept.  Any fool could have read his thoughts.