Abdullah did not kneel. He followed the customs of Zanzib and fell on his face. Besides, he was exhausted and it was easier to fall down with a mighty clatter than do anything else. The tiled floor was blessedly, wonderfully cool.

“Make the son of a camel’s excrement kneel,” said the Sultan. “Make the creature look us in the face.” His voice was low, but it trembled with anger.

A soldier hauled on the chains, and two others pulled on Abdullah’s arms until they had got him sort of bent on his knees. They held him that way, and Abdullah was glad. He would have crumpled up in horror otherwise. The man lounging on the tiled throne was fat and bald and wore a bushy gray beard. He was slapping at a cushion, in a way that looked idle but was really bitterly angry, with a white cotton thing that had a tassel on top. It was this tasseled thing that made Abdullah see what trouble he was in. The thing was his own nightcap.

“Well, dog from a muck heap,” said the Sultan, “where is my daughter?”

“I have no idea,” Abdullah said miserably.

“Do you deny,” said the Sultan, dangling the nightcap as if it were a severed head he was holding up by its hair, “do you deny that this is your nightcap? Your name is inside it, you miserable salesman! It was found by me—by us in person!—inside my daughter’s trinket box, along with eighty-two portraits of common persons, which had been hidden by my daughter in eighty-two cunning places. Do you deny that you crept into my night garden and presented my daughter with these portraits? Do you deny that you then stole my daughter away?”

“Yes, I do deny that!” said Abdullah. “I do not deny, O most exalted defender of the weak, the nightcap or the pictures—although I must point out that your daughter is cleverer in hiding than you are in finding, great wielder of wisdom, for I gave her, in fact, one hundred and seven more pictures than you have discovered—but I have most certainly not stolen Flower-in-the-Night away. She was snatched from before my very eyes by a huge and hideous djinn. I have no more idea than your most celestial self where she is now.”

“A likely story!” said the Sultan. “Djinn indeed! Liar! Worm!”