“There,” I said, “sign that and address it.”

He hesitated.  He couldn’t doubt that his own arrangements with traitors on the staff to kidnap Feisul had gone amiss, else how should I be aware of them at all—­I, who had only arrived that evening in Damascus?  But it puzzled him to know why I should make him write the letter, or, since his plan must have failed, why I should let him share in the kidnapping.  He smelt the obvious rat.  Why didn’t I sign the letter myself, and get all the credit afterward, as any other spy would do?

“You sign it,” he said, pushing the letter toward me; and I got one of those sudden inspirations that there is no explaining—­the right idea for handling fox Rene the banker.

“So you’re afraid to sign that, are you?  All right; give it here, I’ll sign it; pass me your pen.  But you’ll come along with me tonight, my lad, and make your explanations to the French in the morning!”

Looking back, I can see how the accusation worked, although it was an arrow shot at a venture.  His greasy, sly, fox face with its touch of bold impudence betrayed him for a man who would habitually hedge his bets.  Feisul’s safe-conduct had protected him from official interference, but it had needed more than that to preserve him from unofficial murder, and beyond a doubt he had betrayed the French in minor ways whenever that course looked profitable.  Now in a crisis he had small choice but to establish himself as loyal to the stronger side.  He hurriedly wrote a number at the bottom of the letter, and another followed by three capitals and three more figures at the top.

“Seal it up and send it—­quick!” I ordered him.

He obeyed and Jeremy called the servant.

“Summon Francois,” said the banker, and the servant disappeared again.

Francois must remain a mystery.  He was insoluble.  Dressed in a pair of baggy Turkish pants, with a red sash round his middle, knotted loosely over a woollen jersey that had wide horizontal black and yellow strips, with a grey woollen shawl over the lot, and a new tarboosh a size or two too small for him perched at an angle on his head, he stood shifting from one bare foot to the other and moved a toothless gap in his lower face in what was presumably a smile.

He had no nose that you could recognize, although there were two blow-holes in place of nostrils with a hideous long scar above them.  One ear was missing.  He had no eyebrows.  But the remaining ear was pointed at the top like a satyr’s, and his little beady eyes were as black as a bird’s and inhumanly bright.

The banker spoke to him in the voice you would use to a rather spoilt child when obedience was all-important, using Arabic with a few French words thrown in.