the caravans like our white camel-colts—for luck. I would take him myself, but'
'There is a little business in which he would be most useful—in the South,' said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy blued eyelids.
'E.23 has that in hand,' said Creighton quickly. 'He must not go down there. Besides, he knows no Turki.'
'Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he will bring them back,' Lurgan insisted.
'No. That is a man's job,' said Creighton.
It was a little matter of unauthorized and incendiary correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to book for kidnapping women within British territory. The Moslem Archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no need he should continue a correspondence which might some day compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an Arab trader, as E.23, taking up the work, duly reported.
These facts, and a few others not to be published, made both Mahbub and Creighton shake their heads.
'Let him go out with his red lama,' said the horse-dealer with visible effort. 'He is fond of the old man. He can learn his paces by the rosary.'
'I have had some dealings with the old man—by letter,' said Colonel Creighton, smiling to himself. 'Whither goes he?'
'Up and down the land, as he has these three years. He seeks
