s I wouldn't risk it, but I must
have somebody to keep an eye on him when the time comes; that'll
be tomorrow, I think."

"Suppose you tell me the object of the game," I suggested. "I'm
sick of only studying the rules."

"Well--your part will be to sit over those two tons of TNT and
see that nobody explodes them ahead of time. There's a
conspiracy on foot to blow up the Dome of the Rock."

"You mean the Mosque of Omar?"

"The place tourists call the Mosque of Omar. The site of
Solomon's Temple--the Rock of Abraham--the threshing-floor of
Araunah the Jebusite. Next after the shrine at Mecca it's the
most sacred spot in the whole Mahommedan world."

"Good lord!" I said. "Are the Zionists so reckless?".

"No, the Arabs are. Remember what old Scharnhoff said the other
day about the new fanaticism?"

"Is Scharnhoff mixed up in it?"

"He's being watched. If the Arabs pull it off, they'll accuse
the Jews of doing it, and set to work to butcher every Jew in the
Near East. That will oblige the British to protect the Jews.
That in turn will set every Mohammedan in the world--'specially
Indians, but Egyptians, too--against the British. Jihad--green
banner--holy war--all the East and Northern Africa alight while
the French snaffle Syria. Sound good to you?"

"Sir Louis knows this?"

"He, is paid to know things."

"And he lets you play cat and mouse with it?"

"Got to be careful. Suppose we draw the net too soon, what then?
Most of the conspirators escape. The story leaks out. The Jews
get the blame for the attempt, and sooner or later the massacre
begins anyhow. What we've got to do is bag every last mother's
son of them, and suppress the whole story--return the TNT to
store, and swear it was never missing."

"The Administrator has his nerve," I said.

"You'll need yours, too, before this game's played," Grim
answered. "D'you see now why I picked on you for an accomplice?"

"I do not."

"You're the one man in Jerusalem whom nobody will suspect, or be
on the look-out for. The men we're up against are the shrewdest
rats in Palestine. They've got a list of British officers, my
name included, of course. They'll know which men are assigned to
special duty, and they'll keep every one of us shadowed."

"Won't that--I mean, how can you work if you're shadowed?"

"Me? I shall catch my spur in the carpet, fall downstairs and
break a leg at ten-fifteen. At ten-thirty the doctor comes, and
finds me