right to close the house on a holiday.

"Don't be a fool, Mansoor," said Allen, who evidently knew him. "You
understand very well that isn't why we are here. You've jot a hasheesh
den upstairs, above the public show rooms. A nice trick you thought
you'd played us, but you see you didn't bring it off."

By this time we were inside the house, having thrust the caretaker in
again, and passing the three tortuous screen walls of the entrance,
into a courtyard. Several young Arabs dressed as servants stood there,
large-eyed, and stricken at sight of their giant master held by four
policemen. But there was not a sign of our men who had crawled through
the window, and I was impatient to go where they had gone.

There was no sound of scuffling, no sound at all, except the crying of
some startled doves, and Mansoor's voice, swearing by the Prophet's
sacred beard that if anything were wrong he was not the one to blame.
There were those above him who must be obeyed or he and all that were
his would be put out of life; but I cared too little for him, or what
might become of him and his, to listen much. I looked up and saw at the
left of the courtyard, with its several closed doors, a short flight of
steps with a mounting-block, and a doorway leading to a winding
staircase. Round the court went a gallery, supported with old marble
pillars, and underneath on one side was a large recess, the takhtabosh,
raised slightly above the level of the courtyard, and having a row of
wooden benches round its three walls. Here the caretaker and his male
relatives and friends had evidently been smoking their nargilehs and
drinking coffee; our arrival had disturbed them in the midst.

Suddenly, into the frightened mourning of the doves, broke a sharp