Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/58

 flight of steps. Glancing about the canal keenly, Monsey left the that, tossing its proprietor a coin. Stepping forward with the assurance of one who knew the way, he entered a ramshackle wooden structure that had once been a bright pink but was now the hue of a very dirty and diseased carnation. Stooping under an openwork balcony he pressed onward in semidarkness rife with a pungent odor.

This smell came from a native woman young huddled on some mats, puffing a spluttering opium pipe with a child at her breast Monsey kicked the woman aside, the movement drawing a wearied cry from the baby. To silence it, the Kashmiri placed the pipe at its lips. A single breath of the smoke and the child subsided into a drugged sleep.

Monsey ascended a dark flight of steps to an upper room lighted by a yellow hanging lamp and apparently without access to any fresh air. On a bundle of quilts in one corner the form of a girl was coiled—a satin-clad form with spangled, velvet bodice and flooding brown hair escaping under a cap of tarnished cloth of silver.

The pale olive countenance of the woman—a Georgian—was lax in sleep—it might well have been judged pretty otherwise. Circles were under the closed eyes, stained lips parted over fine teeth. An aroma of musk and rose scent exuded from her body. Mingled with the stale perfume was the stringent fragrance of a Turkish hubble-bubble, at which a man puffed. He glanced at Monsey casually, from half-closed eyes.

"Nasha or opium?" he remarked.

"Neither," said Monsey curtly. They both spoke Turki. Apparently they were on familiar terms. The man's face was the hue of the girl's, only the skin was