The noisome passageway was clotted with filth, its air stifling, the darkness such that one was tempted to feel for the walls—but for the knowledge that one really didn’t want to touch what was on those walls. I took half a dozen steps and stopped, waiting for my eyes to adjust before I found myself stepping into a coal cellar.

Then a door opened and the end of the passageway grew light, and I picked my way through unexamined shapes in that direction.

The room at the end was considerably tidier than its approach. It was a small space with a high ceiling, light but shaded from the direct sun hitting the courtyard outside its latticed windows. As soon as the door closed, the room’s fragrance of jasmine-flower and musk reasserted itself; it even seemed cooler in here, although it was probably an illusion brought about by judicious use of blues and greens in the hangings, and the pale wood of the walls and chairs. Just as, I noticed, it seemed larger than it was, since all the furniture was somewhat smaller than normal.

A light and lightly accented voice interrupted my survey. “You like my house, Miss Russell?”

I whirled, unaware that there had been anyone in the room. I had to look around for the owner of the voice, then look down, to find a tiny figure scarcely four feet tall, nearly hairless but wizened with wrinkles, seated in a nest of silk cushions beside a burbling hookah.

“It’s very attractive,” I replied. “How do you know me?”

He giggled, a sound I normally mistrust in a man but which seemed natural in him. “We have, shall I say, mutual friends. And you, Mr Holmes. I had not thought to lay eyes on you again this side of Paradise.”

“Good of you to imagine I might be headed in that direction, Solly. Russell, this is Suleiman Lal. Suleiman is the uncrowned king of Aden, and this room is the junction-box through which all the power of the Red Sea is dispersed. The state of the hall-way outside is his little jest.”

“I imagine it also keeps away stray tourists,” I said drily.

“Precisely,” said the small man, and took a draw at his pipe. “You have come for your mail, I think?”

“To see if there was any,” Holmes replied.

“In the cigar box on the second shelf,” said Lal. Holmes stepped over to the diminutive shelves and drew out the wooden box, thumbing open its lid and taking out the pieces of paper therein. They were not mail, but telegraph flimsies. “Please, do read them,” the small man urged. “You may wish to send a reply. And while you do so, we shall take tea.”