When I came forth, I swooned away:  so I sat down till my trouble subsided; then I made for my comrades and said to them, “I have found the booty and the thief, and I affrighted him not neither troubled him, lest he should flee; but now, come, let us go to him, so we may make shift to lay hold upon him.”  Then I took them and repaired to the keeper of the garden, who had tortured me with beating, meaning to make him taste the like of that which he had done with me and lie against him and cause him eat stick.  So we rushed into the water-wheel and seizing the keeper, pinioned him.

Now there was with him a youth and he said, “By Allah, I was not with him and indeed it is six months since I entered the city, nor did I set eyes on the stuffs until they were brought hither.”  Quoth we, “Show us the stuffs.”  So he carried us to a place wherein was a pit, beside the water-wheel, and digging there, brought out the stolen goods, with not a stitch of them missing.  So we took them and carried the keeper to the prefecture, where we stripped him and beat him with palm-rods till he confessed to thefts galore.  Now I did this by way of mockery against my comrades, and it succeeded.’[FN#142]

The company marvelled at this story with the utmost wonderment, and the eleventh officer rose and said, ’I know a story yet rarer than this:  but it happened not to myself.

The eleventh officer’s story.

There was once aforetime a chief officer [of police] and there passed by him one day a Jew, with a basket in his hand, wherein were five thousand dinars; whereupon quoth the officer to one of his slaves, “Canst thou make shift to take that money from yonder Jew’s basket?” “Yes,” answered he, nor did he tarry beyond the next day before he came to his master, with the basket in his hand.  So (quoth the officer) I said to him, “Go, bury it in such a place.”  So he went and buried it and returned and told me.  Hardly had he done this when there arose a clamour and up came the Jew, with one of the king’s officers, avouching that the money belonged to the Sultan and that he looked to none but us for it.  We demanded of him three days’ delay, as of wont, and I said to him who had taken the money, “Go and lay somewhat in the Jew’s house, that shall occupy him with himself.”  So he went and played a fine trick, to wit, he laid in a basket a dead woman’s hand, painted [with henna] and having a gold seal- ring on one of the fingers, and buried the basket under a flagstone in the Jew’s house.  Then came we and searched and found the basket, whereupon we straightway clapped the Jew in irons for the murder of a woman.