I backed away. With a crooked, sly smile, The Jinnee snapped his
fingers at Boris. The big dog jerked himself free of my hand and
disappeared.
"Now!" said The Jinnee. And like one in a dream I gathered my
lace-trimmed skirts in my hand and backed down a spider-web stairway
that barely gave one foothold. Achmet waited until I reached the
bottom, then he, too, backed in, and I heard the flagstone fall to
over my head.
There was a moment of utter and awful blackness and stillness. I was
upon the point of shrieking, when something cold and friendly
touched my hand: Boris was nosing me. The Jinnee, at the bottom of
the steps, showed the light.
We were in a circular shaft, narrowing upward like an inverted
funnel. It was quite clean and dry, lined with hard cement.
Branching from it were two wedge-shaped openings, just wide enough
to allow one person at a time to walk through.
The Jinnee plunged into one of these, and Boris and I followed.
There was nothing else for us to do.
"This is safest way. If I come through house, I am seen. Not want
that," said Achmet, over his shoulder.
I made no reply. I was wondering what The Author would have said had
he seen us at that moment--The Jinnee shuffling ahead in heelless
slippers and Oriental dress, upon his woolly head a red fez with a
silver crescent on it, and on his breast a string of _saphies_,
verses from the Koran, in exquisite Arabic script, framed in flat
round pieces of silver and strung on a chain.
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