as the vultures that sat perched along the rampart overlooking a
great artificial moat dividing the town from the high hill just
beyond it.

Nobody interfered when I climbed on the broken town wall and
looked over. The castle wall sloped down steeply into the moat,
suggesting ample space within for dungeons and underground
passages; but there was nothing else there of much interest to
see, only dead donkeys, a dying camel with the vultures already
beginning on him, some dead dogs, heaps of refuse, and a lot more
vultures too gorged to fly--the usual Arab scheme of sanitation.
I asked one of my bodyguard to shoot the camel and he obliged me,
with the air of a keeper making concessions to a lunatic. Nobody
took any notice of the rifle going off.

It was when we turned back into the town again that the first
inkling of Grim's presence in the place turned up. A bulky-
looking Arab in a sheepskin coat that stank of sweat so vilely
that you could hardly bear the man near you, came up and stood in
my way. Barring the smell, he was a winning-looking rascal--
truculent, swaggering, but possessed of a good-natured smile that
seemed to say: "Sure, I'm a rogue and a liar, but what else did
you expect!"

He spoke perfectly good English. He said he wished to speak to
me alone. That was easy enough; Ahmed and the bodyguard
withdrew about ten paces, and he and I stepped into a doorway.

"I am Mahommed ben Hamza," he said, with his head on one side, as
if that explanation ought to make everything clear to me at once.