very necessity.  And when was it that this necessity presented itself?  It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it.  But what kind of pocket?  I think you will agree with me, that male garments, admitting of the designation “gown,” have usually only outer pockets—­large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the robe.  But a stone of that size must have made such a pocket bulge outwards.  Ul-Jabal must have noticed it.  Never before has he been perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt.  To obtain it, there are several courses open to him:  he may rush there and then on the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep.  But in these there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or ultimate detection, pursuit—­and this is a land of Law, swift and fairly sure.  No, the old man must die:  only thus—­thus surely, and thus secretly—­can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased.  On the very next day he leaves the house—­no more shall the mistrustful baronet, who is “hiding something from him,” see his face.  He carries with him a small parcel.  Let me tell you what was in that parcel:  it contained the baronet’s fur cap, one of his “brown gowns,” and a snow-white beard and wig.  Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the house, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders far and wide “with uncovered head.”  Can you not picture the distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain?  Of the gown, too, we may be equally certain:  for it was the procuring of this that led Ul-Jabal to the baronet’s trunk; we now know that he did not go there to hide the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to seek it, for he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it in so obvious a place.  As for the wig and beard, they had been previously seen in his room.  But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal has one more work to do:  once more the two eat and drink together as in “the old days of love”; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is “brown as the leaves of autumn.”  That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a hint of the exact shade of the Oriental’s colour—­it was the yellowish-brown of a sered leaf.  And now that the face of the baronet has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs.  He will return, but not immediately, for he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long,