offhandedly. "Those particular McCauleys
never amounted to much. She married a baronet, and he divorced her.
Bad scandal. Saffren Waldon was at the War Office. She stole papers,
or something of that sort--delivered them to a German paramour--von
Duvitz was his name, I think. She and her brother were lucky to keep
out of jail. Ever since then she has been--some say a spy, some say
one thing, some another. My brother fell foul of her, and lived to
regret it. She's on her last legs I don't doubt, or she wouldn't be in
Zanzibar."

"Then why the obvious nervous sweat you're in?" demanded Fred.

"And that doesn't account for the abuse she handed out to us," said
Yerkes.

"Why not tip off the authorities that she's a notorious spy?" I asked.

"I suspect they know all about her," he answered.

"But why your alarm?" insisted Fred.

"I'm scarcely alarmed, old thing. But it's pretty obvious, isn't it,
that she wants us to believe she knows what we're after. She's
vindictive. She imagines she owes me a grudge on my brother's account.
It might soothe her to think she had made me nervous. And by gad--it
sounds like lunacy, and mind you I'm not propounding it for
fact!--there's just one chance that she really does know where the
ivory is!"

"But where's the sense of abusing us?" repeated Yerkes.

"That's the poor thing's way of claiming class superiority," said
Monty. "She was born into one class, married into another, and divorced
into a third. She'd likely to forget she said an unkind word the next
time she meets you. Give her one chance and she'll pretend she
believes you were born to the purple--flatter you until you half
believe it yourself. Later on, when it suits her at the moment, she'll
denounce you as a social impostor! It's just habit--bad habit, I
admit--comes of the life she leads. Lots of 'em like her. Few of 'em
quite so well informed, though, and dangerous if you give 'em a chance."

"I still don't see why you're sweating," said Fred.

"It's hot. There's a chance she knows where the ivory is! She has
money, but how? She'd have begged if she were short of cash! It's my
impression she has been in German government employ for a number of
years. Possibly they have paid her to do some spy-work--in the
Zanzibar court, perhaps--the Sultan's a mere boy--"

"Isn't he woolly-headed?" objected Yerkes.

"Mainly Arab. It's a French game to send a white woman to intrigue at
colored courts, but