I sent my card in by a flat-footed old Russian female, who ran down passages and round corners like a wet hen, trying to find a man-servant.  The place seemed deserted, but presently she came on her quarry in the back yard, and a very small boy in a tarboosh and knickerbockers carried the card on a tray into a room on the left.  Through the open door I could hear one quiet question and a high-pitched disclaimer of all knowledge; then an order, sounding like a grumble, and the small boy returned to the hall to invite me in, in reasonably good English, of which he seemed prouder than I of my Arabic.

So I went into the room on the left, with that Bedouin still in mind.  There was only one man in there, who got out of a deep armchair as I entered, marking his place in a book with a Damascus dagger.  He did not look much more than middle height, nor more than medium dark complexioned, and he wore a major’s khaki uniform.

“Beg pardon,” I said.  “I’ve disturbed the wrong man.  I came to call on an American named Major Grim.”

“I’m Grim.”

“Must be a mistake, though.  The man I’m looking for is taller than you—­very dark—­looks, walks, speaks and acts like a Bedouin.  I saw him this afternoon in Bedouin costume in the American Colony store.”

“Yes, I noticed you.  Sit down, won’t you?  Yes, I’m he—­the Bedouin abayi* seems to add to a man’s height.  Soap and water account for the rest of it.  These cigars are from the States.” [Long-sleeved outer cloak.]

It was hard to believe, even on the strength of his straight statement—­he talking undisguised American, and smiling at me, no doubt vastly pleased with my incredulity.

“Are you a case of Jekyll and Hyde?” I asked.

“No.  I’m more like both sides of a sandwich with some army mule-meat in the middle.  But I won’t be interviewed.  I hate it.  Besides, it’s against the regulations.”

His voice was not quite so harshly nasal as those of the Middle West, but he had not picked up the ultra-English drawl and clipped-off consonants that so many Americans affect abroad and overdo.

I don’t think a wise crook would have chosen him as a subject for experiments.  He had dark eyes with noticeably long lashes; heavy eyebrows; what the army examination-sheets describe as a medium chin; rather large hands with long, straight fingers; and feet such as an athlete stands on, fully big for his size, but well shaped.  He was young for a major—­somewhere between thirty and thirty-five.

Once he was satisfied that I would not write him up for the newspapers he showed no disinclination to talk, although it was difficult to keep him on the subject of himself, and easy to let him lose you in a maze of tribal history.  He seemed to know the ins and outs of every blood-feud from Beersheba to Damascus, and warmed to his subject as you listened.