“Nogam!”

“Sir?”

“Fetch me an A-B-C.”

“Very good, sir.”

With Nogam out of the way, Victor enclosed the telegram in a new envelope and addressed it simply to "Mr. Sturm—­by hand." Then he took a sheet of the stamped notepaper of Frampton Court, tore it roughly, at the fold, and on the unstamped half inscribed several characters in Chinese, using a pencil with a fat, soft lead for this purpose.  This message sealed into a second envelope without superscription, he lighted a cigarette and sat smiling with anticipative relish through its smoke, a smile swiftly abolished as the door re-opened; though Nogam found him in what seemed to be a mood of rare sweet temper.

Taking the railway guide, Victor ruffled its pages, and after brief study of the proper table remarked: 

“Afraid I must ask you to run up to town for me to-night, Nogam.  If you don’t mind ...”

“Only too glad to oblige, sir.”

“I find I have left important papers behind.  Give this to Shaik Tsin”—­he handed over the blank envelope—­“and he will find them for you.  You can catch the ten-fifteen up, and return by the twelve-three from Charing Cross.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Oh—­and see that Mr. Sturm gets this, too, will you?  If he isn’t in, give it to Shaik Tsin to hand to him.  Say it’s urgent.”

“Quite so, sir.”

“That is all.  But don’t fail to catch the twelve-three back.  I must have the papers to-night.”

“I shan’t fail you, sir—­D.V.”

“Deo volente?  You are a religious man, Nogam?”

“I ’umbly ‘ope so, sir, and do my best to be, accordin’ to my lights.”

“Glad to hear it.  Now cut along, or you’ll miss the up train.”

Long after Nogam had left the memory of their talk continued to afford Victor an infinite amount of private entertainment.

“A religious man!” he would jeer to himself.  “Then—­may your God help you, Nogam!”

Some thought of the same sort may well have troubled Nogam’s mind as he sat in an otherwise untenanted third-class compartment blinking owlishly over the example of Victor’s command of the intricacies of Chinese writing.

He was happily free of surveillance for the first time in his waking hours of many days.  The Chinese chauffeur had driven him to the station, and had furthermore lingered to see that Nogam did not fail to board it.  And Nogam felt reasonably safe in assuming that he would not approach the house near Queen Anne’s Gate without seeing (for the mere trouble of looking) a second and an entirely gratuitous shadow attach itself to him with the intention of sticking as tenaciously as that which God had given him.  But the next hour was all his own.

His study of the Chinese phonograms at length resulted in the transformation of his careworn face by a slowly dawning smile, the gleeful smile of a mischief-loving child.  And when he had worked for a while on the message, touching up the skillfully drawn characters with a pencil the mate to that which Victor had used, he sat back and laughed aloud over the result of his labours, with some appreciation of the glow that warms the cockles of the artist’s heart when his deft pen has raised a cheque from tens to thousands, and he reviews a good job well done.