“Did you see the devil smirk as he went off with it?” asked Jeremy.  “Golly, he thinks we’re fools!  The theory is that we two had betrayed you, Rammy, and swapped the letter against his bare promise to pay us in Damascus.  He chucked in a little blackmail about sicking his mates on to murder us if we didn’t come across, and I tell you we fairly love him!  Lordy, here’s Deraa!  If they open the thing before the train leaves, Grim says the lot of us are to bolt back across the border, send Mabel home to her husband, and continue the journey by camel.  That right, Grim?”

Grim nodded.  It was Mabel who objected.

“I’m going to see this through,” she answered.  “Guess again, boys!  My hair’s gone gray.  You owe me a real adventure now, and I won’t give up the letter till you’ve paid!”

We had one first-class scare when the train drew up in the squalid station, where the branch line to Haifa meets the main Hedjaz railway and the two together touch a mean town at a tangent; for a French officer in uniform boarded the train and stalked down the corridors staring hard at everyone.  He asked me for a passport, which was sheer bluff, so I asked him in turn for his own authority.  He smiled and produced a rubber stamp, saying that if I wished to visit Beirut or Aleppo I must get a vise from him.

“Je m’em been garderai!” I answered.  “I’m going to see my aunt at Damascus.”

“And this lady?  Is she your wife?”

I laughed aloud—­couldn’t help it.  All the Old Testament stories keep forcing themselves on your memory in that land, and the legend of Abraham trying to pass his wife off as his sister and the three-cornered drama that came of it cropped up as fresh as yesterday.  There was no need that I could see to repeat the patriarch’s mistake, any more than there was reasonable basis for the Frenchman’s impertinence.

“Is that your business?” I asked him.

“Because,” he went on, smiling meanly, “you speak with an American accent.  It is against the law to carry gold across the border, and Americans have to submit to personal search, because they always carry it.”

“Show me your authority!” I retorted angrily.

“Oh, as for that, there is a customs official here who has full authority.  He is a Syrian.  It occurred to me that you might prefer to be searched by a European.”

“Call his bluff!” Grim whispered behind his sleeve, but I intended to do that, anyway.

“Bring along your Syrian,” said I, and off he went to do it, treating me to a backward glance over his shoulder that conveyed more than words could have done.

“He’ll bluff sky-high,” said Grim, “but keep on calling him.”

“I’ve been searched at six frontiers,” said Mabel.  “If it’s a Syrian I don’t much mind; you boys all come along, and he’ll behave himself.  They’re much worse in France and Italy.  Hadn’t one of you better take the letter, though?  No!  I was forgetting already!  I won’t part with it.  I’ll take my chance with the Syrian; he’ll only ask me to empty my pockets and prove that I haven’t a bag full of gold under my skirt.  Sit tight, all, here he comes!”