ere they left
him, turning the key in the lock as they went away.

CHAPTER XXIX. DOT AND DASH

For a long time after the retreating footsteps of Strangwise and
Bellward had died away, Desmond sat listless, preoccupied with
his thoughts. They were somber enough. The sinister atmosphere of
the house, weighing upon him, seemed to deepen his depression.

About his own position he was not concerned at all. This is not
an example of unselfishness it is simply an instance of the force
of discipline which trains a man to reckon the cause as
everything and himself as naught. And Desmond was haunted by the
awful conviction that he had at length reached the end of his
tether and that nothing could now redeem the ignominious failure
he had made of his mission.

He had sacrificed Barbara Mackwayte; he had sacrificed
Nur-el-Din; he had not even been clever enough to save his own
skin. And Strangwise, spy and murderer, had escaped and was now
free to reorganize his band after he had put Barbara and Desmond
out of the way.

The thought was so unbearable that it stung Desmond into action.
Strangwise should not get the better of him, he resolved, and he
had yet this brief interval of being alone in which he might
devise some scheme to rescue Barbara and secure the arrest of
Strangwise and his accomplices. But how?

He raised his head and looked round the room. The curtains had
not been drawn and enough light came into the room from the
outside to enable him to distinguish the outlines of the
furniture. It was a bedroom, furnished in rather a massive style,
with some kind of thick, soft carpet into, which the feet sank.

Desmond tested his bonds. He was very skillfully tied up. He
fancied that with a little manipulation he might contrive to
loosen the rope round his right arm, for one of the knots had
caught in the folds of his coat. The thongs round his left arm
and two legs were, however, so tight that he thought he had but
little chance of ridding himself of them, even should he get his
right arm free; for the knots were tied at the back under the
seat of the chair in such a way that he could not reach them.

He, therefore, resigned himself to conducting operations in the
highly ridiculous posture in which he found himself, that is to
say, with a large arm-chair attached to him, rather like a snail
with its house on its back. After a certain amount of maneuvering
he discovered that, by means of a kind of slow, lumbering