think of any other reason.

ARCHIE BEAL

I hate danger. Don't you?

JOHN BEAL

Er--well, yes, I suppose I do, really.

ARCHIE BEAL

Of course you do. We all do. It's the
women that put us up to it. She's putting
you up to this. And the more she puts you
up to the more likely is Hussein to get it in his
fat neck.

JOHN BEAL

But--but you don't mean you'd hurt
Hussein? Not--not badly, I mean.

ARCHIE BEAL

We're under her orders, Johnny. See what
she says.

JOHN BEAL

You, you don't really think she'll come
here?

ARCHIE BEAL

Of course I do, and the best thing too.
It's her show; she ought to come.

JOHN BEAL

But, but you don't understand. She's
just a young girl, A girl like Miss Miralda
couldn't come out here over the pass and
down these mountains, she'd never stand it,
and as for the chaperon... You've
never met Miss Miralda.

ARCHIE BEAL

No, Johnny. But the girl that was able to
get you to go from Bromley to this place can
look after herself.

JOHN BEAL

I don't see what that's got to do with it.
She was in trouble and I had to help her.

ARCHIE BEAL

Yes, and she'll be in trouble all the way
here from Blackheath, and everyone will have
to help her.

JOHN BEAL

What beats me is how you can have the
very faintest inkling of what she's like
without ever having seen her and without my
having spoken of her to you for more than a
minute.

ARCHIE BEAL

Well, Johnny, you're not a romantic bird,
you're not a traveller by nature, barring your
one trip to Eastbourne, and it was I that took
you there. And contrariwise, as they say in
a book you've never read, you're a
levelheaded business man and a hardworking
respectable stay-at-home. You meet a girl
in a train, and the next time I see you you're
in a place that isn't marked on the map and
telling it what gods it ought to worship and
what gods it ought to have agnosticism about.
Well, I say some girl.

JOHN BEAL

Well, I must say you make the most
extraordinary deductions, but it was awfully good
of you to come, and I ought to be grateful;
and I am, too, I'm awfully grateful; and I
ought to let you talk all the rot you like. Go
ahead. You shall say what you like and do
what you like. It isn't many brothers that
would do what you've done.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, that's nothing. I like this country.
I'm glad I came. And if I can help you with
Hussein, why all the better.

JOHN BEAL

It's an awful country, Archie, bu