With these words, Said left the house, while Kalum-Bek looked after him speechless with astonishment. The following morning, however, after thinking over the matter well, he sent out his errand boys, and had the runaway sought for every-where. For a long time their search was a vain one; but finally one of the boys came back and reported that he had seen Said come out of a mosque and go into a caravansary. He was, however, much changed, wore a beautiful costume, a dagger sword, and splendid turban.
When Kalum-Bek heard this, he shouted with an oath: "He has stolen from me, and bought clothes with the money. Oh, I am a ruined man!" Then he ran to the chief of police, and as he was known to be a relative of Messour, the head chamberlain, he had no difficulty in having two policemen sent out to arrest Said. Said sat before a caravansary, conversing quietly with a merchant whom he had found there, about a journey to Balsora, his native city, when suddenly he was seized by some men, and his hands tied behind his back before he could offer any resistance. He asked them whose authority they were acting under, and they replied that they were obeying the orders of the chief of police, on complaint of his rightful master, Kalum-Bek. The ugly little merchant then came up, abused and jeered at Said, felt in the young man's pocket, and to the astonishment of the bystanders, and with a shout of triumph, drew out a large purse filled with gold.
"Look! He has robbed me of all that, the wicked fellow!" cried he, and the people looked with abhorrence at the prisoner, saying: "What! so young, so handsome, and yet so wicked! To the court, to the court, that he may get the bastinado!" Thus they dragged him away, while a large procession of people of all ranks followed in their wake, shouting: "See, that is the handsome clerk of the bazar; he stole from his master and ran away; he took two hundred gold pieces!"
The chief of police received the prisoner with a dark look. Said tried to speak, but the official told him to be still, and listened only to the little merchant. He held up the purse, and asked Kalum whether this gold had been stolen from him. Kalum-Bek swore that it had; but his perjury, while it gained him the gold, did not help to restore to him his clerk, who was worth a thousand gold pieces to him, for the judge said: "In accordance with a law that my all-powerful master, the caliph, has recently made, every theft of over a hundred gold pieces that transpires in the bazar, is punished with banishment for life to a desert island. This thief comes at just the right time; he makes the twentieth of his class, and so completes the lot; to-morrow they will be put on a vessel and taken out to sea."