Three hours passed. I had finished luncheon, and was sipping coffee in the lounge, when a sleek personage in gorgeous robes was brought to me. He had a trick of looking down his nose at his moustache, the while he stroked it, with a gentle smirk.

'Your Excellency has been robbed,' he murmured in a secret tone, 'and you would know the robber? There is nothing simpler. I have discovered many thieves. I think it likely that I know the very man. I will disguise myself as an old woman or a begging dervish. There are many ways. But, first, your Honour must bestow on me an English pound. That is my fee. It is but little for such services.'

I answered languidly that the affair had ceased to thrill me; I wished to hear no more about the money or the thief. He stayed a long while, wheedling and remonstrating, depicting his own subtlety in glowing terms; but in the end departed with despairing shrugs and backward glances, hoping that I might relent.

Rashîd, who had been out to tend the horses, came presently and asked if I had seen the great detective. When I described our interview, he nearly wept.

'The people here think me the thief,' he told me. 'They say nothing, but I feel it in their bearing towards me. And now you give up seeking for the culprit! Am I to bear this shame for evermore?'

Here was a new dilemma! No way out of it appeared to me, for even if we did employ the great detective, our chance of finding the delinquent seemed exceeding small. I was thinking what could possibly be done to clear Rashîd, when a familiar figure came into the court and strolled towards us. It was Suleymân! I had imagined him three hundred miles away, at Gaza, in the south of Palestine. Loud were our exclamations, but his calm rebuked us. I never knew him show excitement or surprise.

He heard our story with deliberation, and shook his head at the police and the detective.

'No use at all,' he scoffed. 'The one man for your purpose is the Chief of the Thieves. I know him intimately.'

'Ma sh'Allah! Is there then a guild of thieves?'

'There is.'