The gang drew abreast just as another officer gave tongue to his opinion.  They couldn’t help hearing what he said; he had one of those voices that can carry on conversation in a boiler foundry.

“There’s more in this than meets the eye!  She’s not a nurse.  She don’t walk like a missionary.  I heard her buy a ticket for Aleppo.  Can you imagine a lone, good-looking woman going to Aleppo by that train unless she had a laissez passe from the French?  She’s wearing French heels.  I’ll bet she’s carrying secret information.  Look!  D’you see those two Arabs in the train?” He pointed out Grim and Jeremy, who were leaning from a window.  “They tipped her off to get into the compartment next ahead of them.  D’you see?  There she goes.  She was for getting into the coach ahead.  They called her back.”

Almost all the other cars were empty except that one, but, whether because humans are like sheep and herd together instinctively when afraid, or because the train crew ordered it, all six compartments of the middle first-class car were now occupied, with Mabel Ticknor alone in the front one.  Nevertheless, Yussuf Dakmar and four of his companions started to climb in by the rear door.  The sixth man lingered within earshot of the officers, presumably to pick up further suggestions.

So I got in at the front end and met them halfway down the corridor.

“Plenty of room in the car behind,” I said abruptly.

They were five to one, but Yussuf Dakmar was in front, and he merely got in the way of the wolves behind him.  The sixth man, who had lingered near the officers, now entered by the front end as I had done and called out that there was plenty of room in the front compartment.

“There’s only a woman in here,” he said in Arabic.

And he set the example by taking the seat opposite to Mabel.

It would have been easy enough to get him out again, of course.  Not even the polyglot train crew would have allowed Arabs to trespass without her invitation.

The trouble was that Jeremy, Grim, Narayan Singh and I all rushed to her rescue at the same minute, which let the cat out of the bag.  It was Doctor Ticknor’s statement in Jerusalem about not wanting to see any of us alive again if we failed to bring his wife back safe that turned the trick and caused even Grim to lose his head for a moment.  When a Sikh, two obvious Arabs and an American all rush to a woman’s assistance before she calls for help, there is evidence of collusion somewhere which you could hardly expect a trained spy to overlook or fail to draw conclusions from.

It was all over in a minute.  The rascal left the compartment, muttering to himself in Arabic sotto voce.  I caught one word; but he looked so diabolically pleased with himself that it didn’t really need that to stir me into action.  I take twelves in boots, with a rather broad toe, and he stopped the full heft of the hardest kick I could let loose.  It put him out of action for half a day, and remains one of my pleasantest memories.