nship with the gang; for he thought he
divined that Nur-el-Din was inclined to make him her confidant.
With the information thus procured, he had hoped to get on to the
track of the leader of the band.

But that ugly brute; Mortimer, with his goggle eyes, had spoiled
everything. His appearance had taken Desmond completely by
surprise: to tell the truth, it had thrown our young man rather
off his guard. "If only I might have had a little longer
acquaintance with my part," he reflected bitterly as he sat by
the fire, "I should have been better able to deal with that
pompous ass!"

Afterwards, when thinking over the opening events of this
extraordinary episode of his career, Desmond rather wondered why
he had not followed Mortimer out of the house that afternoon and
tracked him down to his hiding place. But, as a matter of fact,
the idea did not occur to him at the time. His orders were
positive not to leave the house, and he never even thought of
breaking them--at any rate, not then.

His orders, also, it is true, were to report to headquarters any
communication that might be made to him; but these instructions,
at least as far as Nur-el-Din's and Mortimer's visits were
concerned, he resolved to ignore.

For one thing, he felt angry with the Chief who, he argued rather
irrationally, ought to have foreseen and prevented Mortimer thus
taking him by surprise. The Chief liked secrets--well, for a
change, he should be kept in the dark and the laugh would be on
Desmond's side. For a few minutes after Mortimer's departure,
Desmond had felt strongly inclined to go to the telephone which
stood on the desk in the library and ring up Mr. Elias, as he
should have done, but he resisted this impulse. Now, thinking
things over in the firelight, he was glad he had refrained. He
would ferret out for himself the exact part that Nur-el-Din and
Mortimer were playing in this band of spies. Nothing definite had
come of his interviews with them as yet. It would be time enough
to communicate with Headquarters when he had something positive
to report.

Then Desmond thrust the paper he had been studying back in his
pocket-book and jumped up. He felt that the inaction was stifling
him. He determined to go for a walk round the garden. That, at
least, was in the spirit of his orders.

Remembering that he was supposed to be suffering from a chill he
donned a heavy Ulster of Bellward's which was hanging in the hall
and wound a muffler round