On his fifth journey he carried a small Milner safe upon his back, letting it drop gently upon the hovel floor without the slightest acceleration in his breathing.  For five minutes he played with the knob, like a huge monkey, then grinned, rubbed his chest and bull-neck with straw, and padded off again down the circuitous streets at a gentle trot.

He looked at the sky and at the closed doors and windows of the packed houses, and grinned again.  He could not tell the hour by a clock, but he knew to a second when the first of the seething mass of humans asleep on the beds and floors and stairs of the packed houses would yawn, rub the sleep from their eyes and stumble, shivering, into the street.  He had still his greatest treasure to bring, and had no wish to be caught with it on his back; not because of the criminality of his proceedings—­that never once entered his thick skull—­but because he was scared of having the mirror reft from him.  He was almost devoid of brain, but had a certain animal instinct which served him in good stead and which, in this instance, urged him to keep his part in the history of the past evening to himself.  He picked up the full-length mirror as though it had been a small picture, and stood for an instant grinning cheerfully, looking round the room in which his mistress had so often kicked and threatened him.

Then he gave a little click at the back of his throat, placed the mirror on the floor and stole across the Persian carpet of an unknown antiquity and value to a painted deal writing desk which had once reposed in a shop window in Westbourne Grove; and which, on account of its little drawers and little cupboards with painted doors, had given intense joy to the woman whose wealth in hard cash in the bank and jewels in the safe was almost incredible.  He lifted the slanting lid, moved a bundle of papers fastened by an elastic band, and pulled out a drawer out of which be took a cheque-book.

He had no idea of the real use of the book with the buff cover and pale pink leaves, but he knew that you had only to make certain black marks on one of the pink leaves and take it to the big house in the Sharia Clot Bey with its fierce man standing in front of the door and money would be given in exchange.

On account of his cunning, his stolidity, his mighty muscle and ferocious appearance Qatim had been made bank-messenger in chief to the House of Zulannah, and had often stood at his mistress’s side when she had taken the cheque-book from the drawer and made strange black marks on one of the pink leaves.  True, he had rolled his eyes and shown his teeth fiercely many a time at the interpreter who had had to be called to explain that, although he had handed a pink leaf through the bars, there was no money forthcoming; but as his mistress had not struck him for returning empty-handed he had resigned himself at last to the strangeness of the proceedings.  The book meant money, that was all he knew; so he slipped it into his loin-cloth as had been his rather distressing habit when handed a bundle of notes by the bank-clerk who, with his co-workers, had never tired of gazing at the gigantic creature in white shorts, crimson tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar.