A creeper growing in a pot with its leaves trained against the wall gave out a faint scent. There was the squeak and scuffle of a bat in the eaves. From far away came the sounds of merrymakers, so attenuated by distance as to be little louder than the bat’s squeak. And in the silence round the listener pressed the sense of people at hand, of sleepers stirring to far-off sounds. Then the door on which his eyes were fixed opened slowly and a bar of ruddy light slid across the cold whiteness of the moonlight. He was beckoned in.
On entering he found himself in a small and lofty room with a marble floor on which a few poor rugs were spread. There seemed to be no windows and a lamp stood on the ground. The figure of a woman wrapped in a mantle squatted on the floor, and on a couch in an alcove the figure of an Arab raised itself with difficulty on one elbow to look at him.
“What is it? Why have you sent for me?” the Englishman asked impatiently, feeling there had been some hoax, if nothing worse.
At his voice the figure smiled. “It’s rough luck on you bringing you here at this time of night, you must forgive me.”
The traveller stood amazed. The other was no Arab, then! It was an English voice, drawling and weak, but unmistakably that of a gentleman.
“By Jove! you’re English!” said the bewildered newcomer, staring at the strange figure on the couch.
It was that of a tall man in native dress, the face yellowed and lined and so thin that every bone seemed to show. He was evidently very ill, his deep-set eyes burning with fever, his movements weak and uncertain. The Eastern robes hung loosely on his gaunt body and he was half sitting, half lying on the couch, propped up with pillows. Close by him the figure of a woman crouched over a bowl in which she stirred a dark liquid that gave out a pungent smell.
The invalid spoke in Arabic and she got up with a jingle of ornaments and left the room by another door, whilst the boy went back to the courtyard. The visitor watched her ungainly figure moving away, more and more bewildered. What on earth was an Englishman doing here, in these surroundings and with these people?
The other had been regarding him with a faint ironical smile about his lips.