“By Allah, unless you do it I will cut your clothes off with my razor!” Jeremy announced.

We drew up at a station then, and had to wait until the train went on again.  By that time Yussuf Dakmar had made up his mind.  He slipped off his jacket and vest and began to unfasten his collar-button as the train gained speed.

Everything went smoothly until he stood up to remove his pants.  He had the top of them in both hands when Jeremy seized him suddenly by the elbows and spun him face about.  And there the letter lay, face downward on the seat he had just left, bent and a little crinkled in proof that he had been sitting on it for some minutes past.

Now it doesn’t make any difference whether a man meant to take off his trousers or not.  In a crisis, if they are unfastened, he will hold them up.  It’s like catching a monkey; you put corn into a narrow-necked basket.  The monkey inserts his arm, fills his hand with corn, and tries to pull it out, but can’t unless he lets go of the corn, which he won’t do.  So you catch him.  Yussuf Dakmar held up his pants with one hand, and tried to free himself from Jeremy with the other.  If he had let go his pants he might have seized the envelope and discovered what a fake it was; but he wouldn’t do that.  It was I who pounced on it and stowed it away carefully in my inner pocket.

Yussuf Dakmar’s emotions were poignant and mixed, but he was no quitter.  He thought he knew definitely where the letter was now, and the wolf glance with which he favoured me changed swiftly to a smile of ingratiating politeness.

“I am glad you have recovered what you lost,” he said, smiling, as he fastened up his pants and resumed his coat.  “This friend of yours—­or is he your servant?—­made me nervous with his threats, or I should certainly have found it for you sooner.”

And now Grim resumed a hand.  The last thing he wished was that Yussuf Dakmar should consider his quest too difficult, for then he would probably summon assistance at Haifa.  Encouragement was the proper cue, now that Jeremy had tantalized him with a glimpse of the bait.  We had nothing to fear from him unless he should lose heart.

“The value of a sum lies in the answer,” he said, quoting one of those copybook proverbs with which all Syrians love to clinch an argument.

“The letter is in its owner’s pocket.  The accuser should now apologize, and we can spend the rest of the journey pleasantly.”

Jeremy proceeded to apologize: 

“So you’re not such a thief as you looks.”

Then he provided entertainment.  He drew out the razor and did stunts with it, juggling it with open blade from hand to hand—­pretending to drop it and always catching it again within a fraction of an inch of Yussuf Dakmar’s person.  By and by he juggled with coins, match-box, cigars, razor and anything he could lay his hands on.

“Mashallah!” exclaimed the Syrian at last, his face all sweaty with excitement as he shrank back to avoid the spinning razor.  “Where did you learn such accomplishments?”