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creature of evil, but I knew then that the head was only a mask. He
removed it.
“It is merely a man in a costume,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Did you already know that?”
“I knew that it was not an efreet,” Dabir said. “Efreet are
notoriously difficult to control, and not given to subtlety. An efreet
would not patiently leave messages, or steal monkeys. At best it
would have dismembered half the household as a warning.”
Dabir rolled the costumed man over and we stared down at a
pock-marked face with a shabby black and gray beard.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“A lackey, I think. Sometimes I wish you were less lethal, Asim.”
Frequently I wished he was more forthcoming with his thoughts,
but I said nothing.
He seemed to know my feelings, for he said: “right now I am
thinking that our mastermind still awaits this one’s return. I do not
plan to disappoint him.”
The wooden ladder inside the pillar was old, and the rungs
creaked as I climbed down. A lantern sat on the old stone at its foot,
near a coil of rope and some rotted timber.
I picked up the lantern and shined it into the gloom while Dabir
descended, still clutching the efreet head. Moisture saturated the air.
We stood in a small stone chamber, and stone stairs stretched further
down, out under the wall and toward the Euphrates. From somewhere
in the darkness ahead came the steady plunk of dripping water.
Dabir put his hand on an rusted iron wheel set in the wall beside
the ladder. “This must turn the fountain on and off.”
“How did you know,” I whispered, “that the efreet would come
from the fountain?”
“I saw the pattern of the door in its side,” Dabir said, as though it
were obvious.
I did not wish to be distracted by another of his “looking but not
seeing” discussions, so said nothing.
We descended some twenty broad steps and found ourselves in a
square tunnel, supported by sagging, rotting timbers. Moisture beaded
on the walls, and here and there water dripped from the ceiling into
pools of water that had formed in the pitted stone floor.
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