l on our left.

At that moment something gleamed through the air, whizzed past my ear,
and fell with a metallic jingle on the stones!

Instinctively we both looked up.

At an unlighted window on the first floor I caught a fleeting glimpse of
a dark face.

"You were right!" I said. "Ali of Cairo has forestalled us!"

Harley stooped and picked up a knife with a broad and very curious
blade. He slipped it into his pocket, nonchalantly.

"All evidence!" he said. "Keep in the shadow and bend down. I am going
to stand on your shoulders and get into that window!"

Wondering at his daring, I nevertheless obeyed; and Harley succeeded,
although not without difficulty, in achieving his purpose. A moment
after he had disappeared in the blackness of the room above.

"Stand clear, Knox!" I heard.

Two of the cushion seats sometimes called "poof-ottomans" were thrown
down, and:

"Up you come!" called Harley. "I'll grasp your hands if you can reach."

It proved no easy task, but I finally managed to scramble up beside my
friend--to find myself in a dark and stuffy little room.

"This way!" said Harley rapidly--"upstairs."

He led the way without more ado, but it was with serious misgivings that
I stumbled up a darkened stair in the rear of my greatly daring friend.

A pistol cracked in the darkness--and my fez was no longer on my head!

Harley's repeater answered, and we stumbled through a heavily curtained
door into a heated room, the air of which was laden with some Eastern
perfume. In the dim light from a silken-shaded lantern a figure showed,
momentarily, darting across the place before us.

Again Harley's pistol spoke, but, as it seemed, ineffectively.

I had little enough opportunity to survey my surroundings; yet even in
those brief, breathless moments I saw enough of the place wherein we
stood to make me doubt the evidence of my senses! Outside, I knew, lay
a dingy wharf, amid a maze of mean streets; here was an opulently
furnished apartment with a strong Oriental note in the decorations!

Snatching an electric torch from his pocket, Harley leaped through
a doorway draped with rich Persian tapestry, and I came close on his
heels. Outside was darkness. A strong draught met us; and, passing along
a carpeted corridor, we never halted until we came to a room filled with
the weirdest odds and ends, apparently collected from every quarter of
the globe.

Crack!

A bullet flattened itself on the wall behind us!