s of the cavern floor. I shook Suliman again.

"Come on. We're going. Now, let me have a good account of you
to give to Jimgrim. Shut your teeth tight, and remember the part
you've got to play."

He scrambled up the steps ahead of me, and I had to keep hold of
the skirts of his smock to prevent him from running. But he took
my hand at the top, and we managed to get out through the north
door without exciting comment, and without waking the spy,
although I would just as soon have wakened him, for Grim seemed
to think it important that his alibi and mine should be well
established; however, there were two others watching by the
hotel. Ten minutes later I was glad I had not disturbed him.

I gave Suliman a two-piastre piece to pay the man who had charge
of my slippers at the door, and the young rascal was so far
recovered from his fright that he demanded change out of it, and
stood there arguing until he got it. Then, hand-in-hand, we
crossed the great moonlit open court to the gate by which Grim
had brought us in.

Looking back, so bright was the moon that you could even see the
blue of the tiles that cover the mosque wall, and the interwoven
scroll of writing from the Koran that runs around like a frieze
below the dome. But it did not look real. It was like a
dream-picture--perhaps the dream of the men who slept huddled
under blankets in the porches by the gate. If so, they
dreamed beautifully.

There was a Sikh, as Grim had said there would be, standing with
fixed bayonet on the bottom step leading to the street. He
stared hard at me, and brought his rifle to the challenge as I
approached him--a six-foot, black-bearded stalwart he was, with a
long row of campaign ribbons, and the true, truculent Sikh way of
carrying his head. He looked strong enough to carry an ox away.

"Atcha!" said I, going close to him.

He did not answer a word, but shouldered his rifle and marched
off. Before he had gone six paces he brought the rifle to the
trail, and started running. Another Sikh--a younger man--stepped
out of the shadow and took his place on the lower step. He was
not quite so silent, and he knew at least one word of Arabic.

"Imshi!" he grunted; and that, in plain U.S. American, means
"Beat it!"

I had no objection. It sounded rather like good advice.
Remembering what Grim had said about the danger I was running,
and looking at the deep black shadows of the streets, it occurred
to me that that s