“Is my host, ben Nazir, the man who is talking that way?  He has been to Damascus.”

“No.  Another, named Abdul Ali—­a very rich sheikh, who comes here often with caravans of merchandise, and gives rich presents to notables.”

“Has ben Nazir anything to do with it?”

“Who knows?  Mashallah!  The world is full of mysteries.  That Nazir is a knowing one.  They say of him:  whichever option is uppermost, that is always his opinion.  He is a safe man to follow for that reason.  Yet it is easier to follow water through a channel underground.”

We made our way toward the castle at the south side of the town, but were prevented from entering by a guard of feudal retainers, who looked as if they had been well drilled.  They were as solemn as the vultures that sat perched along the rampart overlooking a great artificial moat dividing the town from the high hill just beyond it.

Nobody interfered when I climbed on the broken town wall and looked over.  The castle wall sloped down steeply into the moat, suggesting ample space within for dungeons and underground passages; but there was nothing else there of much interest to see, only dead donkeys, a dying camel with the vultures already beginning on him, some dead dogs, heaps of refuse, and a lot more vultures too gorged to fly—­the usual Arab scheme of sanitation.  I asked one of my bodyguard to shoot the camel and he obliged me, with the air of a keeper making concessions to a lunatic.  Nobody took any notice of the rifle going off.

It was when we turned back into the town again that the first inkling of Grim’s presence in the place turned up.  A bulky-looking Arab in a sheepskin coat that stank of sweat so vilely that you could hardly bear the man near you, came up and stood in my way.  Barring the smell, he was a winning-looking rascal—­ truculent, swaggering, but possessed of a good-natured smile that seemed to say:  “Sure, I’m a rogue and a liar, but what else did you expect!”

He spoke perfectly good English.  He said he wished to speak to me alone.  That was easy enough; Ahmed and the bodyguard withdrew about ten paces, and he and I stepped into a doorway.

“I am Mahommed ben Hamza,” he said, with his head on one side, as if that explanation ought to make everything clear to me at once.  “From Hebron,” he added, when I did not seem to see the light.

The wiser one looks, and the less one says, in Arab lands, the less trouble there’s likely to be.  I tried to look extremely wise, and said nothing.

“Where is Jimgrim?” he demanded.

“If you can tell me that I’ll give you ten piastres,” I answered.

“I will give you fifty if you tell me!”

“Why do you want to know?”

“He is my friend.  He said I should see him here.  But I have not seen him.  He said also I should see you.  You are the Amerikani?  And you don’t know where he is?  Truly?  Then, when you see him, will you say to him, ’Mahommed ben Hamza is here with nine men at the house of Abu Shamah?’ Jimgrim will understand.”