Haifa was crowded with Syrians of all sorts, and there were two or three staff officers in the uniform of Feisul’s army lounging on the platform, who conned new arrivals with a sort of childlike solicitude, as if by looking in a man’s face they could judge whether he was friendly to their cause or not.  Mabel had wired to her friend, and was met at the station, so we had nothing to worry over for the present on her score.  Our own troubles began when we reached the only hotel and found it crowded.  The proprietor, a little wizened, pockmarked Arab in a black alpaca jacket and yellow pants, with a tarboosh balanced forward at a pessimistic angle, suggested that there might be guests in the hotel who would let us share their beds...

“Although there will be no reduction of the price to either party in that event,” he hastened to explain.

It was a wonder of an hotel.  You could smell the bugs and the sanitary arrangements from the front-door step, and although the whole place had been lime-washed, dirt from all over the Near East was accumulating on the dead white, making it look leprous and depressing.

The place fronted on a main street, with its back toward the Bay of Acre at a point where scavengers used the beach for a dumping place.  There was a hostel of British officers about a mile away, where Grim might have been able to procure beds for the whole party; but I noticed no less than five men who followed us up from the station and seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on Yussuf Dakmar and it was a sure bet that if we should show our hands so far as to mess with British officers, the train next day would be packed with men to whom murder would be simple amusement.

Yet Grim and Jeremy needed sleep and so did Narayan Singh.  We offered to rent an outhouse for the night—­a cellar—­the roof, but there was nothing doing, and it was Yussuf Dakmar at last who solved the problem for us.

He found a crony of his, who had occupied for several days a room containing two beds.  With unheard-of generosity, accompanied, however, by a peculiar display of yellow teeth and more of the jaundiced whites of his eyes than I cared to see, this individual offered to go elsewhere for the night and to place the room at my disposal.

“But there is this about it,” he explained.  “Where I am going there is no room for my friend Yussuf Dakmar Bey, so I must ask you to let him share this with you.  You and he could each have a bed, of course, but it seems to me that your servants look wearier than you do.  I suggest then that you take one bed, effendi, and share it with my friend Yussuf Dakmar Bey, leaving the other to your servants, who I hope will be suitably grateful for the consideration shown them.”