orgeous old-rose parasite slipped
through. I had a mental vision of Mahommed ben Hamza lying face-
downward with his new coat stained with blood. There was nothing
for it, it seemed, but the magic formula to move Anazeh.

"Jimgrim says, 'See that ben Hamza gets safely away!"'

"Dog of a Hebron tanner's son--let him die! What is that to me?"

"It is Jimgrim's command."

"Wallahi haida fasl! (By God, this is a strange affair!) Wait
here!"

Old Anazeh, with the name of the Prophet of God on his lips, cast
an envious glare at the bottle of liquor and seized action by the
forelock. There was nothing to excite comment in his getting up
to leave the room. A dozen men had done that and come in again.
He strode out, straight down the middle of the carpet. Suliman
ben Saoud--Jimgrim--went on talking, and to judge by Abdul Ali of
Damascus' increasingly restless retorts he was getting that
gentleman's goat as promised. Finally Abdul Ali got to his feet
and said that if the Ichwan would see him alone he would show him
certain documents that would satisfy him, but that it would not
be policy to produce them in public. He offered to send for the
documents, and to show them during or after the banquet.

So Jimgrim sat down, and there was a good deal of quiet nudging
and nodding. Every one seemed to understand that the Ichwan was
going to be bribed; they seemed to admire his ability to get for
himself a share of the funds that most of them had tapped.

A man nearly opposite me leaned over and said in fairly good
French, with the manner of a doctor assuring his patient that the
worst is yet to come:

"It has been decided that you are to be detained here in the castle
until there is no danger of your carrying away important news."

While I was turning that over in my mind Anazeh came back,
grinning. Something outside had tickled him immensely, but he
would not say anything. He sat down beside me and chuckled into
his beard; and when his neighbour on the right asked what had
amused him he turned the question into a bawdy joke.

"Did ben Hamza get away?" I whispered.

He only nodded. He continued chuckling until the man on duty by
the door announced to the "assembled lords and princes" that the
muezzin summoned them to prayer. All except three Christian
sheikhs trooped up the narrow stairway in Ali Shah al Khassib's
wake, Anazeh going last with a half-serious joke about not caring
to be stabbed in the back.