(Quoth he) I was passing one day in the market, when I found that a
robber had broken into the shop of a shroff, a changer of monies, and
thence taken a casket, wherewith he had made off to the burial-ground.
Accordingly I followed him thither and came up to him, as he opened the
casket and fell a-looking into it; whereupon I accosted him, saying,
“Peace be on you!”[112] And he was startled at me; so I left him and
went away from him. Some months after this, I met him again under
arrest, in the midst of the guards and “men of violence,”[113] and he
said to them, “Seize this man.” So they laid hands on me and carried me
to the Chief of Police, who said, “What hast thou to do with this
wight?” The robber turned to me and looking a long while in my face,
asked, “Who took this man?” and the officer answered, “Thou badest us
take him; so we took him.” And he cried, “I ask refuge of Allah! I know
not this man, nor knoweth he me; and I said not that to you but of a
person other than this.” So they released me, and a while after the
thief met me in the street and saluted me with the salam, saying, “O my
lord, fright for fright! Hadst thou taken aught from me, thou hadst a
part in the calamity.”[114] I replied to him, “Allah be the judge
between me and thee!”[115] And this is what I have to recount. Then came
forward the thirteenth constable and said, “I will tell you a tale which
a man of my friends told me.”