Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/89



the roadway without Monsey gritted his teeth and spat heartily.

"Idiot! Donkey with ears a yard long! Cochon! Canaille! Oh, what a fool. By all the saints and the ninety-nine holy names of Allah: his brain is transparent as the monocle in his eye!"

Thus muttering he strode to the canal bank and hailed a passing gondola. Making sure, without appearing to do so, that he was not followed, he directed the paddler to the bazaar quarter.

Monsey did not go to the house where Abbas sold his poisons, but landed at the silk shop of a Bokharan Jew. Pushing impatiently through a splendid rug hung as a curtain, he confronted the squatting proprietor who was deep in talk with Abbas Abad. The Alaman had buttoned the open flaps of his dirty drill suit and boasted a new pair of English boots, but he lolled over the spluttering water pipe, very much at his ease. Like the Turkish dignitaries he sought to ape, he was solidly fleshed and eager to gratify his senses; unlike the average Turk, he was active in the brain cells, energetic when it was necessary, and possessed of unusual strength in his massive figure.

Monsey dismissed the Bokharan with a jerk of the head, and took the precaution to stand near the curtain until he was satisfied that no one lingered on the other side.