The Carpet from Bagdad [Baghdad]

390 pp. Color frontispiece and plates by Andre Castaigne. In The Carpet from Baghdad" Harold McGrath narrates in his easy popular style the adventures of a young American, of good family, rich and well-educated but without social ties, who Inherits a large importing business and travels, personally, in search of rare rugs. The story opens in Cairo, where he buys, from a stranger of dubious appearance, an undoubted prize - a prayer-rug from the palace of the Pasha of Bagdad. The vengeance of the Arab Sheikh from whose guardianship it has been stolen follows promptly, and receiver and thief are carried off together into the desert. Kidnapped at the same time is the heroine of the story, a charming young girl whose mother - an adventuress of the most adroit type - proves to have been a factor at the very beginning of the plot, which as develops, includes startling episodes on the Continent and in New York. where the reader's credulity feels the strain more than in the Orient.