h.

"My God, how you startled me!" he exclaimed rather testily. "I
never heard you come in!"

He turned rather abruptly and went on with his packing. He struck
Desmond as being rather annoyed at the intrusion; the latter had
never seen him out of temper before.

"Sorry if I butted in," said Desmond, sliding his box of
cigarettes off his finger on to the littered table and sitting
down on a chair. "I came in to say good-bye. I'm going back to
France to-night!"

Maurice looked round quickly. He appeared to be quite his old
self again and was all smiles now.

"So soon?" he said. "Why, I thought you were getting a job at the
War Office!"

Desmond shook his head.

"Not good enough," he replied, "it's back to the sandbags for
mine. But where are you off to?"

"Got a bit of leave; the Intelligence folk seem to be through
with me at last, so they've given me six weeks!"

"Going to the country" asked Desmond.

Strangwise nodded.

"Yep," he said, "down to Essex to see if I can get a few duck or
snipe on the fens. I wish you were coming with me!"

"So do I, old man," echoed Desmond heartily. Then he added in a
serious voice:

"By the way, I haven't seen you since last night. What a shocking
affair this is about old Mackwayte, isn't it? Are there any
developments, do you know?"

Strangwise very deliberately fished a cigarette out of his case
which was lying open on the table and lit it before replying.

"A very dark affair," he said, blowing out a cloud of smoke and
flicking the match into the grate. "You are discreet, I know,
Okewood. The Intelligence people had me up this morning... to
take my evidence..."

Strangwise's surmise about Desmond's discretion was perfectly
correct. With Desmond Okewood discretion was second nature, and
therefore he answered with feigned surprise: "Your evidence about
what? About our meeting the Mackwaytes last night?"

After he had spoken he realized he had blundered. Surely, after
all, the Chief would have told Strangwise about their
investigations at Seven Kings. Still...

"No," replied Strangwise, "but about Nur-el-Din!"

The Chief had kept his own counsel about their morning's work.
Desmond was glad now that he had dissimulated.

"You see, I know her pretty well," Strangwise continued, "between
ourselves, I got rather struck on the lady when she was touring
in Canada some years ago, and in fact I spent so much more money
than I could afford on her that I had to discon