“Your Worship must excuse me,” he said, “but I’m always apt to be a bit suspicious about lawyers.  What dealings I’ve had with them have nearly always turned out for me unfortunately.  And now, if you don’t mind, we’ll go into your court-house, and you can hand me over my mate, and I’ll take him back to the ship.  Enough time’s been wasted already by both of us.”

The Arab, still bowed and submissive, signed toward the doorway, and Kettle marched briskly out along the narrow dark passage beyond, with Rad’s sandals shuffling in escort close at his rear.  The house seemed a large one, and rambling.  Three times Rad’s respectful fingers on his visitor’s sleeve signed to him a change of route.  The corridors, too, as is the custom in Arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature, Kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient surprises.  He had no desire that Rad el Moussa should forget his submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he especially wish to be noosed or knifed from round any of the dusky sudden corners.

In fact he was as much on the qui vive as he ever had been in all his long, wild, adventurous life, and yet Rad el Moussa, who meant treachery all along, took him captive by the most vulgar of timeworn stratagems.  Of a sudden the boarding of the floor sank beneath Kettle’s feet.  He turned, and with a desperate effort tried to throw himself backward whence he had come.  But the boarding behind reared up and hit him a violent blow on the hands and head, and he fell into a pit below.

For an instant he saw through the gloom the face of Rad el Moussa turned suddenly virulent, spitting at him in hate, and then the swing-floor slammed up into place again, and all view of anything but inky blackness was completely shut away.

Now the fall, besides being disconcerting, was tolerably deep; and but for the fact that the final blow from the flooring had shot him against the opposite side of the pit, and so broken his descent at the expense of his elbows and heels, he might very well have landed awkwardly, and broken a limb or his back in the process.  But Captain Owen Kettle was not the man to waste time over useless lamentation or rubbing of bruises.  He was on fire with fury at the way he had been tricked, and thirsting to get loose and be revenged.  He had his pistol still in its proper pocket, and undamaged, and if the wily Rad had shown himself anywhere within range just then, it is a certain thing that he would have been shot dead to square the account.

But Kettle was, as I have said, wedged in with darkness, and for the present, revenge must wait until he could see the man he wanted to shoot at.  He scrambled to his feet, and fumbled in his pocket for a match.  He found one, struck it on the sole of his trim white shoe, and reconnoitred quickly.