They were ushered into a large, luxuriously furnished room, with many divans and Turkish rugs, a fountain playing in the centre of the apartment, and a man in Eastern garments propped up amid some cushions, lazily smoking a hookah.
“My deah Coddington,” said Stringer, hastening toward the smoker and bowing low, “delighted! Permit me to present my friend, Professor Gunn, of America.”
The professor bowed after the fashion of Stringer.
“Deuced glad to know you, don’t you know,” drawled Coddington. “Is this the gentleman, colonel, who is looking for a harem?”
“The same, suh,” nodded Stringer.
“Well, by Jove! I believe I’ve got the very thing he wants. I have the finest harem in the East, you know. Fourteen wives, in all, and every one a pearl. Ya-as.”
“But why do you wish to sell out, sir?” questioned Gunn.
“It’s become a deuced bore, don’t you understand. Besides that, I must return to England soon, and I can’t take my beauties with me. It would be quite scandalous there. I’d find myself arrested, don’t you know. So I have to dispose of my dear little doves. It breaks my heart, but I can’t do anything different. If you want a harem, professor, that outrivals anything in the East, you’ll get it right here, and get it for a song, too.”
Now, it is best to confess the actual truth right here. Professor Gunn had no intention of buying a harem. What the old boy wanted was to get inside a harem—to see it and get a peep at the “Eastern houris,” as he had heard them called. And he took this method of getting in.
The professor was congratulating himself on his cleverness.