r branches of a tree which
stood some twenty feet from the roadway.

At selected intervals I crept from my post and surveyed the lane upon
which the window of the consulting-room opened and also the path
leading to the tradesmen's entrance, from which one might look across
the lawn and in at the open study windows. It was during one of these
tours of inspection and whilst I was actually peering through a gap in
the hedge, that I heard the telephone bell. Dr. Stuart was in the
study and I heard him speaking.

I gathered that his services were required immediately at some
institution in the neighbourhood. I saw him take his hat, stick and
bag from the sofa and go out of the room. Then I returned to the front
garden of my vacant house.

No one appeared for some time. A policeman walked slowly up the road,
and flashed his lantern in at the gate of the house I had commandeered.
His footsteps died away. Then, faintly, I heard the hum of a powerful
motor. I held my breath. The approaching car turned into the road at
a point above me to the right, came nearer ... and stopped before Dr.
Stuart's door.

I focussed my binoculars upon the chauffeur.

It was the brown-skinned man! _Nom d'un nom!_ a _woman_ was descending
form the car. She was enveloped in furs and I could not see her face.
She walked up the steps to the door and was admitted.

The chauffeur backed the car into the lane beside the house.

My heart beating rapidly with excitement, I crept out by the further
gate of the drive, crossed the road at a point fifty yards above the
house and walking very quietly came back to the tradesmen's entrance.
Into its enveloping darkness I glided and on until I could peep across
the lawn.

The elegant visitor, as I hoped, had been shown, not into the ordinary
waiting-room but into the doctor's study. She was seated with her back
to the window, talking to a grey-haired old lady--probably the
doctor's housekeeper. Impatiently I waited for this old lady to depart,
and the moment that she did so, the visitor stood up, turned and ...
it was _Zara el-Khala!_

It was only with difficulty that I restrained the cry of triumph which
arose to my lips. On the instant that the study door closed, Zara
el-Khala began to try a number of keys which she took from her handbag
upon the various drawers of the bureau!

"So!" I said--"they are uncertain of the drawer!"

Suddenly she desisted, looking nervously at the open windows; then,
cros