‘Kasredin is nothing. It means in Arabic the House of Faith, and might cover anything from Hagia Sofia to a suburban villa. What’s your next puzzle, Dick? Have you entered for a prize competition in a weekly paper?’
‘_Cancer,’ I read out.
‘It is the Latin for a crab. Likewise it is the name of a painful disease. it is also a sign of the Zodiac.’
‘_V. _I,’ I read.
‘There you have me. It sounds like the number of a motor-car. The police would find out for you. I call this rather a difficult competition. What’s the prize?’
I passed him the paper. ‘Who wrote it? It looks as if he had been in a hurry.’
‘Harry Bullivant,’ I said.
Sandy’s face grew solemn. ‘Old Harry. He was at my tutor’s. The best fellow God ever made. I saw his name in the casualty list before Kut. … Harry didn’t do things without a purpose. What’s the story of this paper?’
‘Wait till after dinner,’ I said. ‘I’m going to change and have a bath. There’s an American coming to dine, and he’s part of the business.’
Mr Blenkiron arrived punctual to the minute in a fur coat like a Russian prince’s. Now that I saw him on his feet I could judge him better. He had a fat face, but was not too plump in figure, and very muscular wrists showed below his shirt-cuffs. I fancied that, if the occasion called, he might be a good man with his hands.
Sandy and I ate a hearty meal, but the American picked at his boiled fish and sipped his milk a drop at a time. When the servant had cleared away, he was as good as his word and laid himself out on my sofa. I offered him a good cigar, but he preferred one of his own lean black abominations. Sandy stretched his length in an easy chair and lit his pipe. ‘Now for your story, Dick,’ he said.
I began, as Sir Walter had begun with me, by telling them about the puzzle in the Near East. I pitched a pretty good yarn, for I had been thinking a lot about it, and the mystery of the business had caught my fancy. Sandy got very keen.
‘It is possible enough. Indeed, I’ve been expecting it, though I’m hanged if I can imagine what card the Germans have got up their sleeve. It might be any one of twenty things. Thirty years ago there was a bogus prophecy that played the devil in Yemen. Or it might be a flag such as Ali Wad Helu had, or a jewel like Solomon’s necklace in Abyssinia. You never know what will start off a jehad! But I rather think it’s a man.’
‘Where could he get his purchase?’ I asked.
‘It’s hard to say. If it were merely wild tribesmen like the Bedouin he might have got a reputation as a saint and miracle-worker. Or he might be a fellow that preached a pure religion, like the chap that founded the Senussi. But I’m inclined to think he must be something extra special if he can put a spell on the whole Moslem world. The Turk and the Persian wouldn’t follow the ordinary new theology game. He must be of the Blood. Your Mahdis and Mullahs and Imams were nobodies, but they had only a local prestige. To capture all Islam - and I gather that is what we fear - the man must be of the Koreish, the tribe of the Prophet himself.’
‘But how could any impostor prove that? For I suppose he’s an impostor.’
‘He would have to combine a lot of claims. His descent must be pretty good to begin with, and there are families, remember, that claim the Koreish blood. Then he’d have to be rather a wonder on his own account - saintly, eloquent, and that sort of thing. And I expect he’d have to show a sign, though what that could be I haven’t a notion.’
‘You know the East about as well as any living man. Do you think that kind of thing is possible?’ I asked.
‘Perfectly,’ said Sandy, with a grave face.
‘Well, there’s the ground cleared to begin with. Then there’s the evidence of pretty well every secret agent we possess. That all seems to prove the fact. But we have no details and no clues except that bit of paper.’ I told them the story of it.
Sandy studied it with wrinkled brows. ‘It beats me. But it may be the key for all that. A clue may be dumb in London and shout aloud at Baghdad.’ ‘That’s just the point I was coming to. Sir Walter says this thing is about as important for our cause as big guns. He can’t give me orders, but he offers the job of going out to find what the mischief is. Once he knows that, he says he can checkmate it. But it’s got to be found out soon, for the mine may be sprung at any moment. I’ve taken on the job. Will you help?’
Sandy was studying the ceiling.
‘I should add that it’s about as safe as playing chuck-farthing at the Loos Cross-roads, the day you and I went in. And if we fail nobody can help us.’
‘Oh, of course, of course,’ said Sandy in an abstracted voice.
Mr Blenkiron, having finished his after-dinner recumbency, had sat up and pulled a small table towards him. From his pocket he had taken a pack of Patience cards and had begun to play the game called the Double Napoleon. He seemed to be oblivious of the conversation.
Suddenly I had a feeling that the whole affair was stark lunacy. Here were we three simpletons sitting in a London flat and projecting a mission into the enemy’s citadel without an idea what we were to do or how we were to do it. And one of the three was looking at the ceiling, and whistling softly through his teeth, and another was playing Patience. The farce of the thing struck me so keenly that I laughed.
Sandy looked at me sharply.
‘You feel like that? Same with me. It’s idiocy, but all war is idiotic, and the most whole-hearted idiot is apt to win. We’re to go on this mad trail wherever we think we can hit it. Well, I’m with you. But I don’t mind admitting that I’m in a blue funk. I had got myself adjusted to this trench business and was quite happy. And now you have hoicked me out, and my feet are cold.’
‘I don’t believe you know what fear is,’ I said.
‘There you’re wrong, Dick,’ he said earnestly. ‘Every man who isn’t a maniac knows fear. I have done some daft things, but I never started on them without wishing they were over. Once I’m in the show I get easier, and by the time I’m coming out I’m sorry to leave it. But at the start my feet are icy.’
‘Then I take it you’re coming?’
‘Rather,’ he said. ‘You didn’t imagine I would go back on you?’
‘And you, sir?’ I addressed Blenkiron.
His game of Patience seemed to be coming out. He was completing eight little heaps of cards with a contented grunt. As I spoke, he raised his sleepy eyes and nodded.
‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘You gentlemen mustn’t think that I haven’t been following your most engrossing conversation. I guess I haven’t missed a syllable. I find that a game of Patience stimulates the digestion after meals and conduces to quiet reflection. John S. Blenkiron is with you all the time.’
He shuffled the cards and dealt for a new game.
I don’t think I ever expected a refusal, but this ready assent cheered me wonderfully. I couldn’t have faced the thing alone.
‘Well, that’s settled. Now for ways and means. We three have got to put ourselves in the way of finding out Germany’s secret, and we have to go where it is known. Somehow or other we have to reach Constantinople, and to beat the biggest area of country we must go by different roads. Sandy, my lad, you’ve got to get into Turkey. You’re the only one of us that knows that engaging people. You can’t get in by Europe very easily, so you must try Asia. What about the coast of Asia Minor?’
‘It could be done,’ he said. ‘You’d better leave that entirely to me. I’ll find out the best way. I suppose the Foreign Office will help me to get to the jumping-off place?’
‘Remember,’ I said, ‘it’s no good getting too far east. The secret, so far as concerns us, is still west of Constantinople.’
‘I see that. I’ll blow in on the Bosporus by a short tack.’
‘For you, Mr Blenkiron, I would suggest a straight journey. You’re an American, and can travel through Germany direct. But I wonder how far your activities in New York will allow you to pass as a neutral?’
‘I have considered that, Sir,’ he said. ‘I have given some thought to the pecooliar psychology of the great German nation. As I read them they’re as cunning as cats, and if you play the feline game they will outwit you every time. Yes, Sir, they are no slouches at sleuth-work. If I were to buy a pair of false whiskers and dye my hair and dress like a Baptist parson and go into Germany on the peace racket, I guess they’d be on my trail like a knife, and I should be shot as a spy inside of a week or doing solitary in the Moabite prison. But they lack the larger vision. They can be bluffed, Sir. With your approval I shall visit the Fatherland as John S. Blenkiron, once a thorn in the side of their brightest boys on the other side. But it will be a different John S. I reckon he will have experienced a change of
