Chapter 6
PRECISELY AT ELEVEN the following morning, Charlesworth Sahib entered the store of Mordecai the Jew to look for the horse-coper's man, who would be bargaining for a sheepskin coat. The store was an emporium of things new and old, but mostly old; the latter including curios of price, old clothes that were not priceless, second-hand saddlery that smelt sourly, rust spotted knives which had probably cut men a throats, spices to flavour exotic dishes, and hanging from rusty nails, perhaps half a dozen of the sheepskin coats meant to keep the wearer from the bitter cold of the passes.
Charlesworth marked the coats and looked round for the prospective purchaser of one of them. He was not there, indeed, save for himself and a Mahomedan gentleman in white robes with a gold-edged turban
