Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/347

313 cried the carpenter, “what have I done? I made her a cabinet for four dinars, and when I came to seek my hire, she tricked me into entering this compartment and locked the door on me.” And they fell to talking with one another, to divert the King and do away his chagrin.

Presently the neighbours came up to the house and seeing it deserted, said to one another, “But yesterday our neighbour the wife of such an one was in it; but now there is no sound to be heard therein nor soul to be seen. Let us break open the doors and see how the case stands, lest it come to the ears of the King or the Chief of the Police and we be cast into prison and regret that we did not this thing before.” So they broke open the doors and entered the saloon, where they saw the cabinet and heard the men within groaning for hunger and thirst. Then said one of them, “Is there a genie in the cabinet?” “Let us heap faggots about it,” quoth another, “and burn it with fire.” When the Cadi heard this, he cried out at them, saying, “Do it not!” And they said to one another, “Verily, the Jinn make believe to be mortals and speak with men’s voices.” Thereupon the Cadi repeated some verses of the sublime Koran and said to the neighbours, “Draw near to the cabinet.” So they drew near, and he said, “I am so and so the Cadi, and ye are such an one and such an one, and we are here a company.” Quoth the neighbours, “And how came ye here?” And he told them the whole case from beginning to end.

Then they fetched a carpenter, who opened the five doors and let out the Cadi and the Vizier and the Chief of the Police and the King and the Carpenter; and when they saw how they were accoutred, each fell a-laughing at the others. Now she had taken away all their clothes; so each of them sent to his people for fresh clothes and put them on and went out, covering himself therewith from the sight of the folk. See, therefore, O our lord