Most amateurs do overdo things.
They got so afraid that they decided to put me out into the street at all costs, where those enemies of society, the police, might demonstrate their ingenuity.

Yussuf made a dash for the front door, and I suppose he would have called in help and ended my share in the adventure, if something had not happened.
The "something" was Noureddin Ali very much something in his own opinion.
"Why didn't you open the door sooner ?" he demanded.

"I have been knocking for two minutes." He watched Yussuf lock the door again behind him, and then eyed the disheveled room with amused curiosity.

He was a rat-faced little man dressed in a black silk jacket, worsted pants and brown boots, with the inevitable tarboosh set at an angle of sheer impudence--a man at least fifty years old by the look of him, but full of that peppery vigor that so often clings to little men in middle life.

On the whole he looked more like a school-teacher, or a lawyer then a conspirator; but Yussuf addressed him with great deference as "Noureddin Ali Bey," and even old alligator-eyes became obsequious.
Both Yussuf and the other man began explaining the situation to him in rapid-fire Arabic.