“Your cursed interpreter has nearly killed my secretary!  He struck him in the mouth and knocked all his teeth out.  What courteous servants you employ!”

“What was your secretary trying to do to him?” I retorted, but he saw fit not to answer that.  He poured some more brandy instead for Ali Shah al Khassib.

So that was what Anazeh had been laughing at!  The old humourist had either seen the fracas, or had come on the injured old-rose messenger of death nursing a damaged face.  I began to share Grim’s good opinion of ben Hamza.  But though I watched Grim’s face, and knew that he knew German, I could not detect a trace of interest.  He kept on talking against Abdul Ali until after ten o’clock.  By that time most of the notables were about as full as they could hold.  Those who were not too drunk appeared ready for anything in or out of reason.

At that stage of the proceedings they ushered in the dancing girls.  The servants cleared away most of the food, removed the table-cloths, and a ring was formed practically all around the room, the notables leaning their backs against the wall to ease overworked bellies.  I set my cushion down next to a very drunken man just by the narrow door that opened on the stairway leading to the ramparts.  He fell asleep with his head on my shoulder within five minutes, and as that, for some subtle reason, seemed to make me even more unnoticeable I let him snore away in peace.

Over in Abdul Ali’s corner of the room there was a real council of war going on in whispers.  Opposite to him, ten paces or so distant from me, Jimgrim Suliman ben Saoud was holding a rival show.  It seemed about an even bet which was making greater headway.  Those who were more or less drunk, and all the younger sheikhs had eyes and ears for nothing but the dancing girls.

They were outrageous hussies.  They wore more clothes than a Broadway chorus lady, and rather less paint, but if they were symbols of the Moslem paradise (as a learned Arab once assured me that they are meant to be) then, as I answered the Arab on that occasion, “me for hell.”  But none of those sheikhs had ever seen Broadway, so you could hardly blame them.

Abdul Ali of Damascus seemed to have his arrangements with the men in his corner cinched at last to his satisfaction.  He walked a little unsteadily across the room, apparently to make his peace with Suliman ben Saoud.  He held brazenly in one hand a leather wallet that bulged with paper money—­doubtless the “documents” that he had sent for.  He nodded to me as he passed with more familiarity than he had any right to, since he had so ostentatiously dismissed me to the dogs.  I suppose he felt so sure of “convincing” Suliman ben Saoud, and was so bent on offsetting the reaction caused by Anazeh’s behavior that he had been reviving that project about the school and therefore chose to appear on intimate terms with me.  I met him more than half-way; any one who cared to might believe I loved him like a brother.