"They said I was a fool to think of coming down here," he explained as he steered a precarious course through the narrow, swarming Mouski. "So I just clowned around to let 'em keep on thinkin' I was one, see. I even half thought so myself, till some of the wise guys from the European quarter come down and tried to buy me out. Then my shares went up in me own eyes. It pays to think big, believe me. Well, this here's the joint."
They entered a narrow doorway and mounted dark stairs, past store-rooms filled with packing cases, to a dapper office furnished in mahogany and brightened by flowers. Patrick introduced Abdul and Mademoiselle Arzoumanian, the typist, a pallid young woman of thirty-odd, with a flat white nose, disconcertingly large black eyes, and a mop of rust-coloured hair. She wore a black frock and high-heeled shoes. Her hands were as broad as they were long, and her fan-shaped nails showed traces of having been bitten. Paul had the sensation of being in the presence of a moral dwarf.
He wandered forth to inspect the unparalleled assortment of commodities, while his friend dictated contracts couched in grandiloquent terms, gave instructions in bad Arabic and bad French, and interviewed prospective buyers—Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs—Mademoiselle acting as interpreter. At 1.30 Abdul closed the office door, and Patrick leaned back in his swivel chair. Mademoiselle had gone into an improvised kitchen to cook luncheon, and Abdul was producing linen, crockery, and silver.
Places were laid for four, and Paul, who had just left a ship on which the Lascar crew were regarded as some species of lower animal, was a little shocked when Abdul sat down with them. But he covered his surprise as successfully as Abdul concealed his horror at the pork chops the three infidels were preparing to devour. There
