“Endorses you in blank, eh?  How long would he let the endorsement stand if he knew I was behind that screen while he was talking to you?”

“Try him!” Grim suggested.  “Shall I call him back?  He doesn’t want to break you—­told me so, in fact, last night—­but he could change his mind, I daresay.  My tip to you is to get back to Ludd as fast as your car can take you, release Catesby, and say as little as possible to any one!”

“Damn you for a Yankee!” Jenkins answered.  “You’ve got me cornered for the moment, and you make the most of it.  But wait till my turn comes!  As for you, sir,” Jenkins turned and looked me up and down with all the arrogance that nice new crossed swords on his shoulder can give a certain sort of man, “don’t let me catch you trying to interfere in any Administration business, that’s all!”

I offered him a cigarette, grinning.  There was no sense in picking a quarrel.  No man likes to discover that a perfect stranger has overheard his intimate confessions.  His annoyance was understandable.  But he hadn’t nice manners.  He knocked the cigarette case out of my hand and kicked it across the room.  So I got into one of the deep armchairs and laughed at him in self-defense, to preserve my own temper from boiling up over the top.

“To hell with both of you!” Jenkins thundered, and strode out like Mars on the war-path.

“Poor old Jinks!” said Grim, as soon as he had gone.  “As Sir Louis said last night, he has a wife and family besides the unofficial ladies on his string.  All they’ll have to divide between them soon, at the rate he’s going, will be his half-pay.  He has fought for promotion all his days, to keep abreast of expenses.  What that string of cormorants will do with his four hundred pounds a year, when he oversteps at last and gets retired, beggars imagination!  However, let’s get busy.”

Business consisted in dressing me up as an Arab with the aid of Suliman, and drilling me painstakingly for half-an-hour, both of them using every trick they knew to make me laugh or show surprise, and Grim nodding approval each time I contrived not to.  More difficult than acting deaf and dumb was the trick of squatting with my legs crossed, but I had learned it after a fashion in India years ago, and only needed schooling.

“You’ll get scuppered if you’re caught,” he warned me.  “If Suliman wasn’t so scared of devils I wouldn’t risk it, but I must have somebody to keep an eye on him when the time comes; that’ll be tomorrow, I think.”

“Suppose you tell me the object of the game,” I suggested.  “I’m sick of only studying the rules.”

“Well—­your part will be to sit over those two tons of TNT and see that nobody explodes them ahead of time.  There’s a conspiracy on foot to blow up the Dome of the Rock.”

“You mean the Mosque of Omar?”

“The place tourists call the Mosque of Omar.  The site of Solomon’s Temple—­the Rock of Abraham—­the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite.  Next after the shrine at Mecca it’s the most sacred spot in the whole Mahommedan world.”