When the Jew came out, he stumbled over him and thought
that he had killed him.' Then he said to the Jew, 'Is not this
the truth?' 'It is,' replied the Jew. And the tailor turned to
the prefect and said, 'Let the Jew go, and hang me.' When the
prefect heard the tailor's story, he wondered at the adventure of
the hunchback and exclaimed, 'Verily, this is a matter that
should be recorded in books!' Then he said to the hangman, 'Let
the Jew go, and hang the tailor on his own confession.' So the
hangman took the tailor and put the rope round his neck, saying,
'I am tired of taking this man and loosing that, and no one
hanged after all.'
Now the hunchback in question was the favourite buffoon of the
Sultan, who could not bear him out of his sight: so when he got
drunk and did not make his appearance that night or next day, the
Sultan asked the courtiers about him and they replied, 'O our
lord, the chief of the police has come upon him dead and ordered
his murderer to be hanged: but, as the hangman was about to
hoist him up, there came a second and a third and a fourth,
each declaring himself to be the sole murderer and giving the
prefect an account of the manner in which the crime had been
committed.' When the King heard this, he cried out to one of his
chamberlains, saying, 'Go down to the chief of the police and
bring me all four of them.
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