The moment we cleared them, Kinjan put a pistol to the chief’s head. “Ye son of a herring,” he said, quite forgetting to speak Moorish, “take us straight to the Sheikh’s palace, or I’ll schatter yer dhirty brains.” The only words of Moorish were Sheikh and palace, but they were enough for the old boy; he was as skeered an old cuss as I ever saw; he ducked from the pistol, touched his forehead, and muttered something, and we all vamoosed down the rattling stone-paved streets, like the job lot of horse-thieves we were. ‘The old gentleman was profoundly interested in the business-end of that shooting-iron, and so we got right there without any more hanky-panky; you see the streets were just as empty as a nigger’s head, and we had more than a street’s start of the guard. When we pulled up sharp in front of a large detached location, we could hear the guard coming, hell for leather. Kinjan explained to the chief that he had got to take us to the Sheikh right along, or he would investigate his interior. Now that old heathen was as swift a man at trapping an idea as ever I saw; he signed to us to get off our horses, and, with the end of the pistol working into the small of his back, he called out loudly in Moorish, and the gate was thrown open for us. ‘Then,’ said Mr Denver, flipping petulantly at his cigarette ash, ‘occurred a most annoying little affair. We were just passing quietly through the doorway, and the guard not more than a hundred yards away, coming like Jerusalem, when Torin pushed me aside, and stepped back to his horse. “Go on,” he said, “I’ve got another word to say to those fellows.” He was swinging himself into the saddle, when Kinjan drew a bead on the horse and brought the whole show to the ground. “Not so fast, ye suicidin’ divil,” he said, “bear ahand, Dick,” and before Torin could get his balance we lugged him through the door and shut it. ‘I’ve often regretted it since; ’twasn’t a neighbourly thing to do,’ said Mr Denver, thoughtfully, ‘for when a man wants his release real bad, why in thunder shouldn’t he have it?’ He lounged back in his seat with a far-away look in his sunken eyes, and I had to jog him with questions once or twice before he took up the word again.