"One of the German's spies approaches. It is not wise that you remain here. Leave me now: go up the street, and after the sun is gone down seek the caravanserai of our friend Yakoub: there will I meet you."
Burnet had barely risen from his stool when a carpet-mender passed, in the opposite direction to the water-seller.
"Wallahi!" muttered the barber, who had gazed at him with the same fixity. "Another spy approaches, from the other end. If you go now, verily you must meet one or the other. They would mark you as a stranger. Is it a time for questions? Haste now: that former day you became for a while my apprentice, and beguiled the Turkish dogs. So it shall be again."
He was already stripping off Burnet's travel-stained outer clothes and clumsy shoes. These he cast under his bench, and then with amazing quickness replaced them with a long white djellab and light sandals.
"Mark you, Aga," he said, "you are my nephew and new apprentice, in place of that misshapen Mahmoud who has left me. You have even now arrived from Bebejak." He named a village near the Persian frontier northward which was not likely to be well known to these agents of the secret service.
Burnet had just taken up a razor and was feeling its edge when a man in the dress of a city merchant passed the open shop, throwing a glance into the interior. Half a minute afterwards a second man appeared from the opposite direction. He stopped, mounted the two steps that led to the shop, and greeting the barber sat down on the chair.
"Comb my beard, barber," he said.
"In truth it needs the comb, effendi," said Firouz Ali. "A fine beard, of the fineness of silk, though its beauty is hidden by the thrice-accursed dust that defiles it. Yusuf, lay my whitest napkin about the effendi's throat."
"A new apprentice, barber?" said the customer, eyeing Burnet. "More agreeable to look at than that hunchback of yours."
"He has a straight back, Allah be praised," said the barber, "but what is that? A fair form may go with a foolish mind. Ahi! The ingratitude of man! Behold, Mahmoud left me without a moment's warning, enticed away by some flattering tongue. And here am I in a pitiful plight, for all likely youths are snapped up for the army, and I have had to summon my nephew from his mean village in the north, a mere country lout——"