"A thousand pardons," says he, "if I have seem to intrude!"
"Eh?" says I. That wa'n't exactly the comeback you'd expect from a second-story worker, and he has a queer foreign twist to his words.
"It is possible," he goes on, "that I have achieved the grand mistake."
"Maybe," says I, loosenin' up on him a little. "What was it you thought you was after?"
"The house of one McCah-be," says he, "a professor of fists, I am told."
"That's a new description of me," says I, "but I'm the party. All of which don't prove, though, that you ain't a crook."
"Crook?" says he. "Ah, a felon! But no, Effendi. I come on an errand of peace, as Allah is good."
How was that now, havin' Allah sprung on me in my own front yard? Why travel?
"Say, come out here where I can get a better look," says I, draggin' him out of the shadow. "There! Well, of all the——"
No wonder I lost my breath; for what I've picked up off the front lawn looks like a stray villain from a comic opera. He's a short, barrel-podded gent, mostly costumed in a long black cape affair and one of these tasseled Turkish caps. About all the features I can make out are a pair of bushy eyebrows, a prominent hooked beak, and a set of crisp, curlin' black whiskers. Hardly the kind to go shinnin' up waterspouts or squeezin' through upper windows. Still, I'd almost caught him in the act.