It, the throne-rug of Saladin, stared me in the face: rich, lustrous, magnificent, now that it had been cleaned, and the pieces spliced together.

“Where in—?”

Revell laughed at my amazement.

“Most amazing, what? But don’t rub your eyes. It is exactly what it looks like: the rug of the justly popular Saladin. I was just thinking of asking you to translate the inscription. Couldn’t remember the exact wording you gave me several nights ago.”

“Devil take inscriptions! How did you get it? Unless he suddenly needed the money.”

“You could have done the same thing,” Revell began, as he poured himself a drink, then painstakingly selected a cigar. “Especially after I told you in so many words how to go about it.”

“How come, told me how to go about it?”

This was too much for me. He’d been up to dirty work of some kind. It was unbelievable that he had purchased that rug; and I doubted that he was clever enough to have outwitted bin Ayyub. Then what? Breaking and entering? Well, not very likely.

“The last thing I said the other night was something about Aladdin’s lamp. I fancy you recollect. But I was jolly well certain you’d not follow my train of thought. Well, the magician from El Moghreb paraded up and down in front of Aladdin’s palace, offering to exchange old lamps for new ones. And the princess—Mrs. Aladdin—was tickled pink to take an unfair advantage of an old man’s foolishness. So, she joyously swapped the greasy, tarnished old magic lamp for a nice, new one. Never occurred to Aladdin to tell the young person his wife that the rather crude old lamp was of some value. Simple, really.”

“Do you mean to say—?”

“Oh, yes, quite. Exactly, in fact. Mrs. bin Ayyub greatly fancied a lovely Anatolian silk rug about the same size as the revered Saladin’s throne-rug, which, by the way, she thought was a bit passé. Liked my silk rug; bright colors, and not at all worn, and all that sort of thing. So we swapped; and I fancy I noted a gleam of triumph or something like that in her most fascinating eyes. Charming creature, yes?”

And then I exploded.

“You ought to be shot! He’ll beat the tar out of her. He’ll flay her alive.”

“Regrets, and all that, surely. But caveat emptor still holds good. She had no business messing around with the master’s trinkets. After all, a bit of deceit—”

“And that girl will surely smell hell—”

“Much regret, certainly. But really, would you have me pass up such an opportunity? I’d cheerfully have committed murder for that rug. As it is—”

Revell smiled at the memory of his exceeding cleverness and gazed at the throne-rug of Saladin with that fanatic affection comprehensible only to a collector.