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antiquities that most
collectors bring back to Europe and America-are technically stolen.”
    I puffed at my
cigarette placidly. “Go on.”
    “Things have
changed now,” she said. “The balance of financial power favors the Arabs rather
than the Europeans or the Americans. So many Middle Eastern countries are
trying to get their priceless antiquities back to restore them to the national
museums and historic sites where they belong. It is my job to help them track
down their missing property and return it to Arabia.”
    “I see,” I said
calmly. “So you knew about this jar all along.”
    She nodded. “It
is very old and very valuable. It is mentioned in Abdul Hazw’halla’s Book of
Magic, which was supposed to have been written in the fifth century before
Christ; it is also referred to in the legend of Hassan i Sabah. There is a
drawing of it in the Cairo Museum, and even though the drawing is a copy from
the original sketch, the copy itself is more than a thousand years old.”
    “You said it
was mentioned in the Book of Magic” I said quietly. “Does that mean it’s
supposed to have magic properties? You said yourself you believed it was magic.”
    Anna sighed. “I
don’t know. The jar is mentioned so briefly that it’s impossible to say. But
that’s the implication in the text”
    “Magic?”
    She opened her
black pocketbook and took out a folded photostat. Without a word, she handed it
to me and I opened it.
    It was a
fragment of Arabic text. Since I don’t read Arabic, or even pretend to, it
looked like a march of cup hooks to me. But underneath there was a typewritten
translation.
    “Read it,” she
said. “It’s a little flowery but interesting.”
    I took a drag
from my cigarette and then I read out loud. “In the latter days of King Hama,
the court magicians, in the style of old, kept by them certain jars, which were
known as jars of the jinni, and mastered the art of the jars, from which
emanations unknown to mortal men were seen. No one knew from whence these jars
came, and no one save the court magicians themselves knew their mystery,
although it was said that they were bound by certain songs and sealed by
certain incantations. The greatest of all the court magicians was Ali Babah,
and his jar of jinni was said to contain the most powerful of all emanations,
though it was never seen to be opened, and Ali Babah himself said that what his
jar of the jinni contained could not be looked upon. The jar of Ali Babah was
decorated with the horses of Nazwah the Unthinkable and the opium flowers of. .
.” I stopped reading and held the photostat up. “Is
this a joke?” I said coldly.
    Anna shrugged.
“Do you think it is?”
    I flicked the
paper with my fingertips. “Ali Babah? What about the forty thieves-or did you
leave the other thirty-nine at home?”
    Anna took the photostat back. “That’s unfair,” she said. “I’m employed
by the Iranian Department of Culture to do a perfectly legitimate job. I’m
returning stolen property, not housebreaking. Anyway, if you were that much of
a mystic or clairvoyant or whatever you call yourself, you’d know that Ali
Babah is mentioned in nearly all of the old Persian
magical books.
    He was one of
the most notorious black magicians in the whole Middle East.”
    “You mean, this is for real? You’re trying to tell me it’s
true?”
    She snapped her
pocketbook shut. “I wouldn’t have made the effort to come here if it weren’t,”
    she said. “As far as I can make out, Max Greaves somehow
procured the original jar of jinni and shipped it back to America. You can see
from the description that it’s the same jar.”
    “A similar jar. How many jars have horses and flowers on
them?”
    “Thousands, I
expect. But the horses of Nazwah the Unthinkable were very special. If you saw
that jar as a child, you’ll probably remember that they had no eyes.”
    I crushed out
my cigarette and blew out the last mouthful of smoke. “Very well, they have