The gentle voice stopped suddenly as the door was thrown open by a much armed individual, who angrily demanded the meaning of the disturbance.

“The peace of Allah be upon thee and upon this house, into which, by the order of thy master, O! brother, I bring a flower which he has deigned to pluck from within the city.  Comely is she, and gifted in music and the dance, but young, is affrighted at the honour before her.  I------”

Here the armed individual broke in ruthlessly upon the paean of praise, drawing a most gleaming and curved weapon from somewhere about his huge person.

“Begone, disturbers of the peace,” he ejaculated with the difficulty natural to one who has had his tongue split.  “My master awaits a flower in truth, being even now o’ercome in sleep in the waiting, but the flower will show a warrant the which will pass her through this door of which I am the guardian.  By Allah! it is not opened at the tapping of every chance weed which the wind of poverty may cause to flutter across this path!”

Things began to look somewhat awkward for the humble flower wilting on the marble step, until her friend, speaking suddenly and sharply, saved the situation by leaning down and quite violently snatching something from the little hand fumbling most awkwardly among the many feminine draperies.

“Behold the warrant, O! unbeliever.  So desirous of this maiden is thy master, upon whom may the blessing of Allah rest, that he even gave unto her father the ring of emerald from off his right hand.  Art satisfied, or is’t best to risk the tempest by still further questioning and delay!”

The guardian of the door, not a little astounded, snatched in his turn at the jewel, and seeming perfectly satisfied after a prolonged scrutiny, stood aside and motioned the two to enter, and shutting the door behind them and ordering them to stand where they were until he returned from his dangerous mission of disobeying, by breaking in upon his master’s privacy, stalked off with much dignity into the perfumed, half-lit, enormous hall.

Now if only he had been afflicted with one iota of the curiosity apportioned by time to Lot’s wife, that man might have been alive even to this day.  But he neither turned his head nor pricked his ears, thereby failing to note that with the lightning methods of the eel the comely flower had in some miraculous way slipped from her all enveloping sheath of draperies to stand revealed a wiry, glistening-with-oil youth, who, without a moment’s pause, with knife in teeth, and as silently as a lizard, glided across the dividing yards of Persian carpet separating him from his quarry.

Across the hall and through endless deserted rooms they passed, the companion of the camouflage maiden bringing up the rear.  Right to the far quarter of the house they went, one after the other, and the guardian of the house felt little more than a pin-prick when, just as his hand pulled aside the curtain screening a door, the youth behind him raising his right arm drove the knife clean under the left shoulder blade, catching the dead body as it fell backwards to lay it noiselessly upon the floor just as his friend appeared upon the scene.