"By the Beard, you heard something from that addle-pate who has but now left us. But that is little. I can tell you more. There is at this time in the city a German, a very cunning fellow, who has gathered about him spies in number as the ants in an ant-hill. Ahi! but there is no buckle to his shoe; by which parable understand that he speaks not the tongue of those that he employs, and needs an interpreter. With him there is an Arab who has sold himself to the Turks, and moreover a German who speaks my tongue readily, though with a gurgling throat--a man who has lived many years in this land, digging for the treasures of old time. Is not his name Bukkad Bey?" "Burckhardt! I know him. I met him with my father years ago." He smiled at some recollection. "So he's here, organising secret police! Well now, my friend----" Firouz Ali interrupted him by a gesture. The barber's eyes were fixed on a water-seller who was passing the shop, going down the street. Burnet saw no glance exchanged, heard no word; but the man had no sooner gone by than Firouz Ali said in a hurried undertone-- "One of the German's spies approaches. It is not wise that you remain here. Leave me now: go up the street, and after the sun is gone down seek the caravanserai of our friend Yakoub: there will I meet you." Burnet had barely risen from his stool when a carpet-mender passed, in the opposite direction to the water-seller. "Wallahi!" muttered the barber, who had gazed at him with the same fixity. "Another spy approaches, from the other end. If you go now, verily you must meet one or the other. They would mark you as a stranger. Is it a time for questions? Haste now: that former day you became for a while my apprentice, and beguiled the Turkish dogs. So it shall be again." He was already stripping off Burnet's travel-stained outer clothes and clumsy shoes. These he cast under his bench, and then with amazing quickness replaced them with a long white djellab and light sandals. "Mark you, Aga," he said, "you are my nephew and new apprentice, in place of that misshapen Mahmoud who has left me. You have even now arrived from Bebejak." He named a village near the Persian frontier northward which was not likely to be well known to these agents of the secret service. Burnet had just taken up a razor and was feeling its edge when a man in the dress of a city merchant passed the open shop, throwing a glance into the interior. Half a minute afterwards a second man appeared from the opposite direction. He stopped, mounted the two steps that led to the shop, and greeting the barber sat down on the chair. "Comb my beard, barber," he said. "In truth it needs the comb, effendi," said Firouz Ali. "A fine beard, of the fineness of silk, though its beauty is hidden by the thrice-accursed dust that defiles it. Yusuf, lay my whitest napkin about the effendi's throat."