out 'ow I'm goin' to kick 'em in the south side of their pants—and they ain't goin' to find out for a long time yet. By the w'y, look up Babu Bansi's old correspondence and see wot the blighter's nyme is—you know, the governor of the western marches of Tamerlanistan. Phone me, and then go straight to Pollocks, on Bond Street, and get me a 'ole lot of them jewels Oriental potentytes likes—off-color diamonds and moonstones and opals and things. Pollocks will know. 'Ave 'em charge it up to me and damn the expense. Then, to-morrow early, go to the Smith & Union Bank …”
And a string of precise instructions, since Mr. Preserved Higgins' method of doing business, once he had arrived at a decision, was as simple and direct as a question in the Rule-of-Three.
Half an hour later he was closeted with his friend, Baron Vassily Ilyitch de Todleben, of the Russian Embassy, who was one of those men who have to have blatantly outward signs of the fact that they are enjoying themselves: a motor-car, a bottle of champagne, a chorus girl, or a chair in a roulette game; and who, being congenitally impecunious, and as congenitally unscrupulous, was willing not to let his left hand know what his right was taking.
“Yes,” he said to Mr. Preserved Higgins, “I'll find out what I can about that Abderrahman Yahiah Khan—governor of the western marches of Tamerlanistan, didn't you say?”
“Yes, Baron.”
“All right. I have a friend in Moscow, a high official in the Bureau for Pan-Russian Central-Asian
