"I'll go over the first thing in the morning," said Mr. Peasley. "I'll be there at eight o'clock, because he isn't due here until nine."
When he arrived at the shop early next morning Mahmoud was standing in the doorway wearing a grin of devilish triumph. Mr. Peasley kept on walking and pretending not to see him, but he came back to the hotel mad all the way through.
[Illustration: _Mahmoud--wearing a grin of devilish triumph_]
"We're up against an Oriental mind-reader, but I'll fool him yet," he declared. "When we come back to the hotel for luncheon and he is waiting for us with the donkey boys on the east side of the hotel we will go out the west door to the river bank and cut south around the Presbyterian Mission and come back to the shop."
Mr. Peasley did not know that Mahmoud had organised all the hotel servants into a private detective agency. He must have known of our escape on the river side before we had gone a hundred feet from the hotel, for when, after executing our brilliant flank movement, we arrived at the shop of the antiquarian, Mahmoud and the proprietor were sitting in the front room drinking Turkish coffee and waiting for the prey to wander into the trap. Mahmoud did not seem surprised to see us. He bade us welcome and said that his friend the dealer was an Egyptologist whose guarantee was accepted by every museum in the world, and if we were in the market for antiques he would earnestly advise us to seek no further. After this evidence of a close and friendly understanding between the dragoman and the dealer we had a feeling that Mahmoud would get his ten per cent, even if we succeeded in eluding him and buying on our own hook.
But we hated to acknowledge ourselves beaten. At dusk that evening we started toward the shop, in a half-hearted and experimental spirit, and presently we observed Mahmoud following along fifty feet behind us. We went to the garden of a neighbouring hotel and sat there until eleven o'clock. When we came out Mahmoud was at the gateway. He said it was not always safe for travellers to be about the streets at night, so he would protect us and show us the way back to our hotel.
We found it impossible to get away from him. No Siberian bloodhound ever followed a convict's trail more closely. If we ventured forth, early or late, we found ourselves shadowed by that smiling reprobate. When it came to the last day in Luxor Mr. Peasley did the bold thing. He permitted Mahmoud to escort him to the shop, and then he said to the dealer:--"This man is our guide, but he is not entitled to any commission because he did not bring us to your shop. If he had recommended your shop in the first place we would not have come here at all. He is a bluff. He is trying to ring in. I want to buy a few things here, with the understanding that he doesn't get anything out of it. We have already paid him two salaries for guiding us and he isn't a guide at all--he's a night watchman."