Part 20 (2/2)

Before he left he asked my naers, Mr Hanau,' he said in very good English 'I have so a friend, and what I have is at your disposal' This with the condescension of a king pro his favour to a subject

The little fellow amused me tremendously, and rather impressed me too I said so to Gaudian after he had left, but that decent soul didn't agree

'I do not love him,' he said 'We are allies-yes; but friends-no He is no true son of Islam, which is a noble faith and despises liars and boasters and betrayers of their salt'

That was the verdict of one honest ot another froreater than Enver He had been out alone and had corey and draith pain The food we ate-not at all bad of its kind-and the cold east wind played havoc with his dyspepsia I can see hi milk on a spirit-laet hie about his inside

'My God, Major, if I were you with a sound stoot to doin my intestines I' at its vitals'

He got his an to sip it

'I've been to see our pretty landlady,' he said 'She sent for hty set on Mesopotaerly

'Why, no, but I have reached one conclusion I opine that the hapless prophet has no sort of time with that lady I opine that he will soon wish hihty God ever created a female devil it's Madarave face

'That isn't my duodenal dyspepsia, Major It's the verdict of a ripe experience, for I have a cool and penetrating judgeive it as my considered conclusion that that woman's mad and bad-but principally bad'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Lady of the Mantilla

Since that first night I had never clapped eyes on Sandy He had gone clean out of the world, and Blenkiron and I waited anxiously for a word of news Our own business was in good tri east towards Mesopotamia, but unless we learned rotesque failure And learn about Greenested his existence, and it was impossible of course for us to ask questions Our only hope was Sandy, for anted to knoas the prophet's whereabouts and his plans I suggested to Blenkiron that we ht do more to cultivate Frau von Eine doing for us in that quarter,' he said 'That's the ot any kind of notion that ise about her pet schemes I reckon you and I would very soon be in the Bosporus'

This was all very well; but as going to happen if the two of us were bundled off to Baghdad with instructions to wash away the British? Our ti pretty short, and I doubted if we could spin out more than three days more in Constantinople I felt just as I had felt with Stuht when I was about to be packed off to Cairo and saay of avoiding it Even Blenkiron was getting anxious He played Patience incessantly, and was disinclined to talk I tried to find out so or wouldn't speak-the for, too, as I walked about the streets, but there was no sign anywhere of the skin coats or the weird stringed instruments The whole Company of the Rosy Hours seean to wonder if they had ever existed

Anxiety made me restless, and restlessnessabout the city The weather had becoain, and I was sick of the smells and the squalor and the flea-bitten crowds So Blenkiron and I got horses, Turkish cavalry h the suburbs into the open country

It was a grey drizzling afternoon, with the beginnings of a sea fog which hid the Asiatic shores of the straits It wasn't easy to find open ground for a gallop, for there were endless sardens of country houses We kept on the high land above the sea, and e reached a bit of downland ca trenches Whenever we let the horses go we had to pull up sharp for a digging party or a stretch of barbed wire Coils of the beastly thing were lying loose everywhere, and Blenkiron nearly took a nasty toss over one Then ere always being stopped by sentries and having to show our passes Still the ride did us good and shook up our livers, and by the ti ed back in the short winter twilight, past the wooded grounds of white villas, held up every few ons and companies of soldiers The rain had coled horse the h white wall, a pleasant smell of wood s veld My ear, too, caught the twanging of a zither, which soarden-house

I pulled up and proposed to investigate, but Blenkiron very testily declined