Peter scarcely looked up from his breakfast.  
“I’m willing, Dick,” he said. “But you mustn’t ask me to be friends with Stumm. He makes my stomach cold, that one.”
 
For the first time he had stopped calling me “Cornelis”. The day of make-believe was over for all of us.
 
“Not to be friends with him,” I said, “but to him and all his kind.”
 
“Then I’m ready,” said Peter cheerfully. “What is it?”
 
I spread out the maps on the . There was no light in the place but Blenkiron’s electric torch, for Hussin had put out the lantern. Peter got his nose into the things at once, for his intelligence work in the Boer War had made him handy with maps. It didn’t want much telling from me to explain to him the importance of the one I had looted.
 
“That news is worth many a million pounds,” said he, wrinkling his brows, and scratching delicately the tip of his left ear. It was a way he had when he was startled.
 
“How can we get it to our friends?”
 
Peter . “There is but one way. A man must take it. Once, I remember, when we fought the Matabele it was necessary to find out whether the chief Makapan was living. Some said he had died, others that he’d gone over the border, but I believed he lived. No native could tell us, and since his kraal was well defended no runner could get through. So it was necessary to send a man.”
 
Peter lifted up his head and laughed. “The man found the chief Makapan. He was very much alive, and made good shooting with a shot-gun. But the man brought the chief Makapan out of his kraal and handed him over to the Mounted Police. You remember Captain Arcoll, Dick—Jim Arcoll? Well, Jim laughed so much that he broke open a wound in his head, and had to have a doctor.”
 
“You were that man, Peter,” I said.
 
“Ja. I was the man. There are more ways of getting into kraals than there are ways of keeping people out.”
 
“Will you take this chance?”
 
“For certain, Dick. I am getting stiff with doing nothing, and if I sit in houses much longer I shall grow old. A man bet me five pounds on the ship that I could not get through a -line, and if there had been a trench-line handy I would have taken him on. I will be very happy, Dick, but I do not say I will succeed. It is new country to me, and I will be hurried, and hurry makes bad stalking.”
 
I showed him what I thought the likeliest place—in the spurs of the Palantuken mountains. Peter’s way of doing things was all his own. He scraped earth and plaster out of a corner and sat down to make a little model of the landscape on the table, following the contours of the map. He did it , for, like all great hunters, he was as as a bird. He puzzled over it for a long time, and the map till he must have got it by heart. Then he took his field-glasses—a very good single Zeiss which was part of the spoils from Rasta’s motor-car—and announced that he was going to follow my example and get on to the house-top. Presently his legs disappeared through the trap, and Blenkiron and I were left to our reflections.
 
Peter must have found something interesting, for he stayed on the roof the better part of the day. It was a dull job for us, since there was no light, and Blenkiron had not even the of a game of Patience. But for all that he was in good spirits, for he had had no dyspepsia since we left Constantinople, and announced that he believed he was at last getting even with his darned duodenum. As for me I was pretty restless, for I could not imagine what was detaining Sandy. It was clear that our presence must have been kept secret from Hilda von Einem, for she was a of Stumm’s, and he must by now have blown the gaff on Peter and me. How long could this last, I asked myself. We had now no sort of protection in the whole . Rasta and the Turks wanted our blood: so did Stumm and the Germans; and once the lady found we were deceiving her she would want it most of all. Our only hope was Sandy, and he gave no sign of his existence. I began to fear that with him, too, things had miscarried.
 
And yet I wasn’t really , only impatient. I could never again get back to the beastly of that Constantinople week. The guns kept me cheerful. There was the devil of a bombardment all day, and the thought that our Allies were thundering there half a dozen miles off gave me a groundless hope. If they burst through the defence Hilda von Einem and her prophet and all our enemies would be overwhelmed in the . And that blessed chance depended very much on old Peter, now brooding like a pigeon on the house-tops.
 
It was not till the late afternoon that Hussin appeared again. He took no notice of Peter’s absence, but lit a lantern and set it on the table. Then he went to the door and waited. Presently a light step fell on the stairs, and Hussin drew back to let someone enter. He departed and I heard the key turn in the lock behind him.
 
Sandy stood there, but a new Sandy who made Blenkiron and me jump to our feet. The and skin-cap had gone, and he wore instead a long clasped at the waist by a broad girdle. A strange green turban his head, and as he pushed it back I saw that his hair had been shaved. He looked like some —a weary acolyte, for there was no spring in his walk or nerve in his carriage. He dropped on the divan and laid his head in his hands. The lantern showed his haggard eyes with dark lines beneath them.
 
“Good God, old man, have you been sick?” I cried.
 
“Not sick,” he said . “My body is right enough, but the last few days I have been living in hell.”
 
Blenkiron nodded sympathetically. That was how he himself would have described the company of the lady.
 
I marched across to him and gripped both his wrists.
 
“Look at me,” I said, “straight in the eyes.”
 
His eyes were like a sleep-walker’s, unwinking, unseeing. “Great heavens, man, you’ve been drugged!” I said.
 
“Drugged,” he cried, with a weary laugh. “Yes, I have been drugged, but not by any physic. No one has been doctoring my food. But you can’t go through hell without getting your eyes red-hot.”
 
I kept my grip on his wrists. “Take your time, old chap, and tell us about it. Blenkiron and I are here, and old Peter’s on the roof not far off. We’ll look after you.”
 
“It does me good to hear your voice, Dick,” he said. “It reminds me of clean, honest things.”
 
“They’ll come back, never fear. We’re at the last lap now. One more and it’s over. You’ve got to tell me what the new snag is. Is it that woman?”
 
He shivered like a frightened colt. “Woman!” he cried. “Does a woman drag a man through the nether-pit? She’s a she-devil. Oh, it isn’t madness that’s wrong with her. She’s as as you and as cool as Blenkiron. Her life is an infernal game of chess, and she plays with souls for . She is evil—evil—evil.” And once more he buried his head in his hands.
 
It was Blenkiron who brought sense into this atmosphere. His slow, beloved drawl was an antiseptic against nerves.
 
“Say, boy,” he said, “I feel just like you about the lady. But our job is not to investigate her character. Her will do that good and sure some day. We’ve got to figure how to her, and for that you’ve got to tell us what exactly’s been occurring since we parted company.”
 
Sandy pulled himself together with a great effort.
 
“Greenmantle died that night I saw you. We buried him secretly by her order in the garden of the . Then came the trouble about his successor ... The four Ministers would be no party to a swindle. They were honest men, and that their task now was to make a tomb for their master and pray for the rest of their days at his . They were as immovable as a hill and she knew it.... Then they, too, died.”
 
“Murdered?” I .
 
“Murdered ... all four in one morning. I do not know how, but I helped to bury them. Oh, she had Germans and Kurds to do her work, but their hands were clean compared to hers. Pity me, Dick, for I have seen honesty and put to the and have the deed when it was done. It will haunt me to my dying day.”
 
I did not stop to console him, for my mind was on fire with his news.
 
“Then the prophet is gone, and the is over,” I cried.
 
“The prophet still lives. She has found a successor.”
 
He stood up in his linen tunic.
 
“Why do I wear these clothes? Because I am Greenmantle. I am the Kaába-i-hurriyeh for all Islam. In three days’ time I will reveal myself to my people and wear on my breast the green ephod of the prophet.”
 
He broke off with an laugh. “Only you see, I won’t. I will cut my throat first.”
 
“Cheer up!” said Blenkiron . “We’ll find some prettier way than that.”
 
“There is no way,” he said; “no way but death. We’re done for, all of us. Hussin got you out of Stumm’s clutches, but you’re in danger every moment. At the best you have three days, and then you, too, will be dead.”
 
I had no words to r............