“Miss Russell, I am not, perhaps, on the side of God as you would see it, but I assure you, I am not on the other side, either. I am glad to have met you, my dear.”

He inclined his head, the equivalent of an offered hand, a gesture I returned. Then we left, through a door into the courtyard instead of the filthy alley, and came out on the next street over under the eye of a very large and well-armed Turk. I glanced around to be sure there was no one listening, and said in a low voice, “Holmes, do you trust that man?”

“Solly collects information, he does not sell it. He is utterly safe as a conduit because he is completely impartial, and would as willingly have given us our messages and served us tea if we were sworn enemies of the British Crown. Every side uses Lal because they know he will not sell them out. And no side tries to lay hands on his secrets because if they did, hell would pour down on them—secrets have a way of accumulating, and he lets it be known that his untimely death would loose them. Now, tell me what sort of silk you would like to practise your scarf act with.”

We submerged ourselves again in the souk, making small purchases such as any English visitors might, as well as two or three items that Holmes appeared to have ordered beforehand, no doubt through his diminutive friend with the conjoined Moslem-Hindu names.

One of these purchases was at a jeweller’s shop, and we were standing at the man’s small counter examining a cunningly linked trio of bangles and conversing with the shopkeeper in Arabic when Holmes abruptly shifted his position so that the bangles disappeared into his sleeve. He continued the motion by reaching out to pluck a ring from a nearby display, saying in a loud English voice, “My dear, isn’t this very like the ring your sister lost last year?”

As I had no sister and Holmes would no more address me as “my dear” than he would embrace me in public, it took no great subtlety of thought to know that he had spotted an intruder in the doorway. And sure enough, when I had taken the spectacularly ugly piece and turned with it to the lighter portion of the shop, there stood a familiar figure, ill concealed by his topee and dark sun-glasses. I looked up, surprised, and let an expression of recognition cross my face.

“Mr Goodheart, so you decided to come ashore after all! What do you think of this ring?”

He pulled the dark glasses from his bloodshot eyes and came fully into the shop, giving the ring I held out the merest glance. He seemed more interested in what we had been looking at earlier, but the bangles had vanished, and the shopkeeper was as phlegmatic as Holmes.