So I did not wake up again until after midnight. The moonlight was streaming through a little high-perched window, and fell on the white-robed, ghostly-looking figure of a man, who sat with crossed legs on the end of the bed. I thought I was dead and in hell.
That is no picturesque exaggeration about a man's hair standing when he is terrified. It really does. I would have yelled aloud, if the breath would have come, but there is a trick of sudden fear that seems to grip your lungs and hold them impotent. The thing on the end of the bed had no eye-brows. It grinned as if it knew all about evil, and were hungry, and living men were its food.
I don't know how long I stared at the thing, but it seemed like a week. At last it spoke, and I burst into a sweat with the reaction.
"Good job you don't know how to fasten a door with a chair. I'll have to show you that trick, or you'll be dying before your time. Sh-h-h! Don't make a noise!"
I sat up and looked more closely at him. It was the Ichwan of the afternoon—Sheikh Suliman ben Saoud. And he was speaking unmistakable American. I began again to believe I was dreaming. He chuckled quietly and lit a cigarette.
"Aren't you wise to me yet?"
"Grim?"
"Who else?"
"But what's happened to your face? You're all one-sided."
"Oh, that's easy. I just take out my false teeth. The rest is done with a razor and some brown stain. I thought you were going to spot me when you first came. Did you? I didn't think so. Did you act as well as all that?"