icious gleam in ben Nazir's eyes.

Chapter Five

"D'you mind if I use You?"

For all his care to seem hospitable before any other
consideration, ben Nazir looked ill at ease. He led me down
again to a dining-room hung with spears, shields, scimitars and
ancient pistols, but furnished otherwise like an instalment-plan
apartment. He watched while a man set food before me. It seemed
that Anazeh had gone away somewhere to eat with his men.

Ben Nazir's restlessness became so obvious that I asked at last
whether I was not detaining him. He jumped at the opening. With
profound apologies he asked me to excuse him for the remainder of
the afternoon.

"You see," he explained, "I came from Damascus to Jerusalem, so I
was rather out of touch with what was going on here. This
conference of notables was rather a surprise to me. It will not
really take place until tomorrow, but there are important details
to attend to in advance. If you could amuse yourself--"

The man who could not do that in a crusader city, crammed with
sons of Ishmael who looked as if they had stepped out of the
pages of the Old Testament, would be difficult to please. I
asked for Ahmed, to act as interpreter. Ben Nazir volunteered to
provide me with two men in addition as a sort of bodyguard.

"Because Ahmed is a person who is not respected."

It did not take ten minutes to produce Ahmed and the two men.
The latter were six-foot, solemn veterans armed with rifles
and long knives. With them at my heels I set out to explore
El-Kerak.

"There is nothing to see," said Ahmed, who did not want to come.
But Ahmed was a liar. There was everything to see. The only
definite purpose I had in mind was to find Grim. It was possible
I might recognize him even through his disguise. Failing that,
he could not help but notice me if I walked about enough; if so,
he would find his own means of establishing communication.

But you might as well have hunted for one particular pebble on a
beach as for a single individual in all that throng. Remembering
Grim's disguise when I first saw him, I naturally had that
picture of him in mind. But all the Bedouins looked about as
much alike as peas in a pod. They stared at me as if I were a
curio on exhibition, but they did not like being stared back at.

There was no hint of violence or interference, and no apparent
resentment of an alien's presence in their midst. The loud-
lunged bodyguard shouted o