in of remote
peoples. Perhaps the Scots are better than the English, but we're all
a thousand per cent better than anybody else. Sandy was the wandering
Scot carried to the pitch of genius. In old days he would have led a
crusade or discovered a new road to the Indies. Today he merely roamed
as the spirit moved him, till the war swept him up and dumped him down
in my battalion.

I got out Sir Walter's half-sheet of note-paper. It was not the
original--naturally he wanted to keep that--but it was a careful
tracing. I took it that Harry Bullivant had not written down the words
as a memo for his own use. People who follow his career have good
memories. He must have written them in order that, if he perished and
his body was found, his friends might get a clue. Wherefore, I argued,
the words must be intelligible to somebody or other of our persuasion,
and likewise they must be pretty well gibberish to any Turk or German
that found them.

The first, '_Kasredin_', I could make nothing of. I asked Sandy.

'You mean Nasr-ed-din,' he said, still munching crumpets.

'What's that?' I asked sharply.

'He's the General believed to be commanding against us in Mesopotamia.
I remember him years ago in Aleppo. He talked bad French and drank the
sweetest of sweet champagne.'

I looked closely at the paper. The 'K' was unmistakable.

'Kasredin is nothing. It means in Arabic the House of Faith, and might
cover anything from Hagia Sofia to a suburban villa. What's your next
puzzle, Dick? Have you entered for a prize competition in a weekly
paper?'

'_Cancer,_' I read out.

'It is the Latin for a crab. Likewise it is the name of a painful
disease. It is also a sign of the Zodiac.'

'_V. I_,' I read.

'There you have me. It sounds like the number of a motor-car. The
police would find out for you. I call this rather a difficult
competition. What's the prize?'

I passed him the paper. 'Who wrote it? It looks as if he had been in
a hurry.'

'Harry Bullivant,' I said.

Sandy's face grew solemn. 'Old Harry. He was at my tutor's. The best
fellow God ever made. I saw his name in the casualty list before Kut.
... Harry didn't do things without a purpose. What's the story of
this paper?'

'Wait till after dinner,' I said. 'I'm going to change and have a
bath. There's an American coming to dine, and he's part of the
business.'

Mr Blenkiron arrived punctual to the minute in a fur coat like a
Russian pri