I have never known him to argue.  Nor did he then, but strode straight down into the khan yard, we sitting on the balcony to watch.  He visited our string of mules first for an excuse, and invited a Kurdish chieftain (all Kurds are chieftains away from home) to inspect a swollen fetlock.  With that subtle flattery he unlocked the man’s reserve, passed on from chance remark to frank, good-humored questions, and within an hour had talked with twenty men.  At last he called to one of the Zeitoonli to come and scrape the yard dung from his boots, climbed the stairs leisurely, and sat beside us.

“You’re quite right, Fred,” he said quietly.

Then there came suddenly from out the darkness a yell for help in English that brought three of us to our feet.  Fred brushed his fierce mustaches upward with an air of satisfaction, and sat still.

“There’s somebody down there quite wrong, and in line at last to find out why!” he said.  “I’ve been waiting for this.  Sit down.”

We obeyed him, though the yells continued.  There came blows suggestive of a woman on the housetops beating carpets.

“D’you recollect the man I mentioned at the consulate—­the biped Peter Measel, missionary on his own account, who keeps a diary and libels ladies in it?  Well, he’s foul of a thalukdar* from Rajputana, and of a Prussian contractor, recruiting men for work on the Baghdad railway.  I wasn’t allowed to murder him.  I see why now—­finger of justice—­I’d have been too quick.  Sit down, you idiots!  You’ve no idea what he wrote about Miss Vanderman.  Let him scream, I like it!”

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* Punjabi Word—­landholder.
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“Come along,” said Monty.  “If he were a bad-house keeper he has had enough!”

But Will had gone before us, headlong down the stairs with the speed off the mark that they taught him on the playing field at Bowdoin.  When we caught up he was standing astride a prostrate being who sobbed like a cow with its throat cut, and a Rajput and a German, either of them six feet tall, were considering whether or not to resent the violence of his interference.  The German was disposed to yield to numbers.  The Rajput not so.

“Why are you beating him?” asked Monty.

“Gott in Hinimel, who would not!  He wrote of me in his diary —­der Liminel!—­that I shanghai laborers.”

“Do you, or don’t you?” asked Monty sweetly.

“Kreutz-blitzen!  What is that to do with you—­or with him?  What right had he to write that people in France should pray for me in church?”

The Rajput all this while was standing simmering, as ready as a boar at bay to fight the lot of us, yet I thought with an air about him, too, of half-conscious surprise.  Several times he took a half-pace forward to assert his right of chastisement, looked hard at Monty, and checked mid-stride.

“You’ve done enough,” said Monty.