He was known to have been in Europe until recently.  Rumours about Lawrence had been tossed from mouth to mouth for days past, and here was somebody who looked like Lawrence in the dark, followed by Grim and Hadad and addressed as “Colonel.”  Why shouldn’t those three Shereefian officers jump to conclusions, salute like automatons and grin like loyal men who have surprised a secret and won’t tell anyone but their bosom friends?  It was all over Damascus within the hour that Lawrence had come from England to stand by Feisul in the last ditch.  The secret was kept perfectly!

We let Mabel walk ahead of us, and there was no trouble at the customs barrier, where normally every piastre that could be wrung from protesting passengers were mulcted to support a starving treasury; for the officers strode behind us, and trade signs to the customs clerk, who immediately swore at everyone in sight and sent all his minions to yell for the best cabs in Damascus.

Narayan Singh distributed largesse to about a hundred touts and hangers-on and we splashed off toward the hotel in two open landaus, through streets six inches deep in water except at the cross-gutters, where the horses jumped for fear of losing soundings.  Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were in flood as usual at that time of year, and the scavenging street curs had to swim from one garbage heap to the next.  There was a gorgeous battle going on opposite the hotel door, where half a dozen white-ivoried mongrels with their backs to a heap of kitchen leavings held a ford against a dozen others, each beast that made good his passage joining with the defenders to fight off the rest.  I stood on the hotel steps and watched the war for several minutes, while Grim went in with the others and registered as “Rupert Ramsden of Chicago, U.S.A., and party.”

The flood, and darkness owing to the lack of fuel, were all in our favour, for such folk as were abroad were hardly of the sort whose gossip would carry weight; nevertheless, we hadn’t been in the hotel twenty minutes before an agent of the bank put in his appearance, speaking French volubly.  Seeing my name on the register, he made the mistake of confining his attention to me, which enabled Grim to get Mabel safely away into a big room on the second floor.

The Frenchman (if he was one—­he had a Hebrew nose) made bold to corner me on a seat near the dining-room door.  He was nervous rather than affable—­a little pompous, as behooved the representative of money power—­and evidently used to having his impertinences answered humbly.

“You are from the South?  Did you have a good journey?  Was the train attacked?  Did you hear any interesting rumors on the way?”

Those were all preliminary questions, thrown out at random to break ice.  As he sat down beside me you could feel the next one coming just as easily as see that he wasn’t interested in the answers to the first.