Grim, Jeremy and I drove to Ludd in a hired auto, Grim and Jeremy both in Arab costume, and I trying to look like a tourist.  Jeremy was supposed to be a travelled Arab intent on guiding me about Damascus for the usual consideration.

The platform was crowded, and we secured a compartment in the train without calling much attention to ourselves.  There were British officers of all ranks, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, refugee Armenians, Maltese, Kurds, a Turk or two, Circassians, men from as far off as Bokhara, Turkomans, Indians of all sorts, a sprinkling of Bedouins looking not quite so at home as in their native desert, and local Arabs by the score.  About half of them were in a panic, encouraged to it by their shrill women-folk, fighting in a swarm for tickets at one small window, where an insolent Levantine demonstrated his capacity for self-determination by making as many people as possible miss the train.  I caught sight of Mabel Ticknor in the front compartment of our car, and Grim pointed out Yussuf Dakmar leaning through a window of the car behind.  His face was fat, unwholesome, with small, cold eyes, an immoral nose, and a small mouth with pouting lips.  The tarboosh he wore tilted at an angle heightened the general effect of arrogant self-esteem.  He was an illustration of the ancient mystery—­how is it that a man with such a face, and such insolence written all over him, can become a leader of other men and persuade them to hatch the eggs of treachery that he lays like a cuckoo in their nests?

He smirked at Grim suggestively as we went by, and Grim, of course, smirked back, with a sidewise inclination of the head in my direction, whereat Yussuf Dakmar withdrew himself, apparently satisfied.

“Now he’ll waste a lot of time investigating you,” said Grim in an undertone.  “We’d better keep awake in turns, or he’ll knife you.”

“The toe of my boot to him!” I retorted.  “One clean kick might solve this international affair!”

“Steady!” Grim answered.  “We need him until after leaving Haifa.  The French agent wired, and they’ll have a gang at Haifa ready for us; but Yussuf Dakmar will warn them off if we keep him hoping.”

So we settled down into our compartment after a glance to make sure that Mabel was all right, and for about two minutes I imagined we were in for a lazy journey.  Narayan Singh was on a camp-stool in the corridor, snoozing with one eye open like a faithful sheep-dog.  It didn’t seem possible for a creature like Yussuf Dakmar to make trouble for us, and I proposed that we should match coins for the first turn to go to sleep.

We had just pulled our coins out, and the engineer was backing the train in order to get her started, when Yussuf Dakmar arrived at our door, carrying his belongings, and claimed a seat on the strength of a lie about there being no room elsewhere.

There’s something about a compartment on a train that makes whoever gets in first regard the rest of the world as intruders.  Nobody would have been welcome, but we would have preferred a pig to Yussuf Dakmar.  Jeremy, democrat of democrats, who had slept without complaining between the legs of a dead horse on a rain-swept battlefield, with a lousy Turkish prisoner hugging him close to share the blanket, was up in arms at once.