As soon as our host had left the room, all bows and toothy smiles,
Jeremy with his back to me drew from one pocket the letter he was
supposed to have stolen from me, flourished it in Yussuf Dakmar's face,
and concealed it carefully in another. Then a new humorous notion
occurred to him. He pulled it out again, folded it in the pocket wallet
in which he had carried it from the first, wrapped the whole in a
handkerchief, which he knotted carefully and then handed it to me.
"Effendi," he said, "you are a fierce master and a mighty drunkard, but
a man without guile. Keep that till the morning. Then, if Omar wants to
steal it he will have to murder you instead of me, and I would rather
sleep than die. But you must give it back at dawn, because the prayers
are in it that a very holy ma'lim wrote for me, and unless I read those
prayers properly tomorrow's train will come to grief before we reach
Damascus."
He acted the part perfectly of one of those half-witted, wholly shrewd
mountebanks, who pick up a living by taking advantage of tolerance and
good nature. You've all seen the type. It's commonest at race-meetings
but you'll find it anywhere in the world where vagrant men of means
foregather.
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