a stick and a sound of muttered conversation in some place below.

Hassan reentered and went in through the curtained doorway to
summon Agapoulos. Agapoulos was dressing and would not be
disturbed. Hassan went back to those who waited, but ere long
returned again chattering volubly to himself. Going behind the
carven screen he rapped upon the door of Zahara's room, and she
directed him to come in. To Zahara, Hassan was no more than a
piece of furniture, and she thought as little of his intruding
while she was in the midst of her toilet as another woman would
have thought of the entrance of a maid.

"Two men," reported Hassan, "who won't go away until they see
somebody."

"Whom do they want to see?" she inquired indifferently, adjusting
the line of her eyebrow with an artistically pointed pencil.

"They say whoever belongs here."

Zahara invariably spoke either French or English to natives, and
if Hassan had addressed her in Arabic she would not have replied,
although she spoke that language better than she spoke any other.

"What are they like? Not--police?"

"Foreign," replied Hassan vaguely.

"English--American?"