ot certain death. If you take this
thing on, you'll have a sporting chance for your life, but that's
all. It's going to be a desperate game played against a desperate
opponent. Now do you understand why I didn't want you to think I
was flattering you? You've got your head screwed on right, I
know, but I should hate to feel afterwards, if anything went
wrong, that you thought I had buttered you up in order to entice
you into taking the job on!"

Desmond took two or three deep puffs of his cigarette and dropped
it into the ash-tray.

"I'll see you!" he said.

The Chief grinned with delight.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I knew you were my man!"

CHAPTER VII. NUR-EL-DIN

The love of romance is merely the nobler form of curiosity. And
there was something in Desmond Okewood's Anglo-Irish parentage
that made him fiercely inquisitive after adventure. In him two
men were constantly warring, the Irishman, eager for romance yet
too indolent to go out in search of it, and the Englishman,
cautious yet intensely vital withal, courting danger for danger's
sake.

All his ill-humor of the morning at being snatched away from his
work in France had evaporated. In the Chief he now saw only the
magician who was about to unlock to him the realms of Adventure.
Desmond's eyes shone with excitement as the other, obviously
simmering with satisfaction, lit another cigarette and began to
speak.

"The British public, Okewood," he said, hitching his chair
closer, "would like to see espionage in this country rendered
impossible. Such an ideal state of things is, unfortunately out
of the question. Quite on the contrary, this country of ours is
honeycombed with spies. So it will ever be, as long as we have to
work with natural means: at present we have no caps of
invisibility or magician's carpets available.

"As we cannot hope to kill the danger, we do our best to scotch
it. Personally, my modest ambition is to make espionage as
difficult as possible for the enemy by knowing as many as
possible of his agents and their channels of communication, and
by keeping him happy with small results, to prevent him from
finding out the really important things, the disclosure of which
would inevitably compromise our national safety."

He paused and Desmond nodded.

"The extent of our business," the Chief resumed, "is so large,
the issues at stake so vital, that we at the top have to ignore
the non-essentials and stick to the essentials. By the