“I got news to-day in a roundabout way from Taghati.  That’s the town just within the Russian frontier there.  It seems that the whole country is in a ferment.  The hill tribes are out and the Russian frontier line is threatened.  So they say.  I have the actual names of the people who are making the row.  Russian troops are being massed along the line there.  The whole place, you know, has been for long a military beehive and absurdly over-garrisoned, so there is no difficulty about the massing.  The difficulty lies in the reason.  Three thousand square miles or so of mountain cannot be so dangerous.  One would think that the whole Afghan nation was meditating a descent on the Amu Daria.”  He glanced up at his companion, and the two men saw the same anxiety in each other’s eyes.

“Anything more of Marka?” asked Wratislaw.

“Nothing definite.  He is somewhere in the Pamirs, up to some devilry or other.  Oh, by the by, there is something I have forgotten.  I found out the other day that our gentleman had been down quite recently in south-west Kashmir.  He was Arthur Marker at the time, the son of a German count and a Scotch mother, you understand.  Immensely popular, too, among natives and Europeans alike.  He went south from Bardur, and apparently returned north by the Punjab.  At Bardur, Logan and Thwaite were immensely fascinated, Gribton remained doubtful.  Now the good Gribton is coming home, and so he will have the place for a happy hunting-ground.”

Wratislaw was puffing his under-lip in deep thought.  “It is a sweet business,” he said.  “But what can we do?  Only wait?”

“Yes, one could wait if Marka were the only disquieting feature.  But what about Taghati and the Russian activity?  What on earth is going on or about to go on in this square inch of mountain land to make all the pother?  If it is a tribal war on a first-class scale then we must know about it, for it is in the highest degree our concern too.  If it is anything else, things look more than doubtful.  All the rest I don’t mind.  It’s open and obvious, and we are on the alert.  But that little bit of frontier there is so little known and apparently so remote that I begin to be afraid of trouble in that direction.  What do you think?”

Wratislaw shook his head.  He had no opinion to offer.

“At any rate, you need fear no awkward questions in the House, for this sort of thing cannot be public for months.”

“I am wondering whether somebody should not go out.  Somebody quite unofficial and sufficiently clever.”

“My thought too,” said Beauregard.  “The pinch is where to get our man from.  I have been casting up possibilities all day, and this one is too clever, another too dull, another too timid, and another too hare-brained.”

Wratislaw seemed sunk in a brown study.

“Do you remember my telling you once about my friend Lewis Haystoun?” he asked.

“I remember perfectly.  What made him get so badly beaten?  He ought to have won.”