“When the door is opened,” he finally said, “step quickly across and into a doorway directly opposite.”
They were ready. The door was opened, and, without loss of time, they crossed a space of about three feet between the two buildings and entered the doorway spoken of by Assouan.
The black man followed them as soon as he had closed the door after leaving the storehouse. They found they had stepped into a room where, sitting cross-legged on the floor, an old sandal maker was at work. To their surprise, this old man, after looking at them curiously, kept on about his labor without speaking a word.
Assouan explained that the man was a mute.
The black man made some signs, which were answered by a single signal from the sandal maker. Then Assouan again instructed his disguised companions to follow him, pushed aside a curtain from a low doorway, stooped and passed into an adjoining room.
This room was on the front of the house. The door to the street stood wide open. A middle-aged Syrian woman was working at a rude loom, weaving some sort of goods. Two girls, one about thirteen and the other eight or nine, were sorting and preparing the strands used by the woman in her work.
The woman glanced at Assouan, but seemed to give none of the others a look. Dick fancied an expression of alarm swept over her face, but she continued stolidly and steadily about her work.
The children stared at them until the woman spoke in a low tone of command, seeming to rebuke them for their rudeness, after which they resumed the work of sorting and preparing the strands.
Assouan tossed a piece of silver before the woman, but she kept at her work, without seeming to notice it. Dick would have dropped more money, but the black man restrained him with a gesture and a shake of the head. They passed out upon the street, one at a time.
Assouan strode in advance. Professor Gunn, looking like a ragged old Armenian, doddered along behind him. Buckhart, as a respectable young Greek, kept by himself, taking the opposite side of the street. Dick imitated the shiftless, shuffling walk of the young vagabonds of the city, thus making his assumed character seem real, and followed them all at a little distance.