Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/309

281 sundown and drugged Delileh’s food and that of Zeyneb and the slaves.

Now the doors of the khan were opened and shut with the sun: so he went forth and cried out, saying, ‘O dwellers in the khan, the watch is set and we have loosed the dogs; so whoso stirs out after this hath but himself to blame.’ Now he had delayed the dogs’ supper and put poison therein; so, when he set it before them, they ate of it and died. Then he went up and took all the clothes and the carrier-pigeons and opening the gate, made off to the barrack of the Forty, where he found Hassan Shouman, who asked him how he had fared. So he told him what had passed and he praised him. Then he caused him put off his clothes and made a decoction of herbs, with which he washed him, and his skin became white as before; after which he donned his own clothes and going back to the khan, clad the cook in the clothes he had taken from him and made him smell to the counter-drug: whereupon he awoke and going forth to the greengrocer’s, bought vegetables and returned to the khan.

When the day broke, one of the lodgers in the khan came out of his chamber and seeing the gate open and the slaves drugged and the dogs dead, went in to Delileh, whom he found lying drugged, with a scroll on her neck and at her head a sponge steeped in the counter-drug. He set the sponge to her nostrils and she awoke and said, ‘Where am I?’ Quoth he, ‘When I came down from my chamber, I saw the gate of the khan open and the dogs dead and found the slaves and thee drugged.’ So she took up the scroll and read therein these words, ‘None did this thing save Ali the Egyptian.’ Then she awoke the slaves and Zeyneb by making them smell to the counter-drug and said to them, ‘Did I not tell you that this was Ali of Cairo? But do ye conceal the matter.’ Then she said to her daughter, ‘How often have I told