“The message is to my brother,” she went on.

“I don’t know him!” put in Monty promptly.

“You mean you don’t like him!  Your brother had him expelled from two or three clubs, and you prefer not to meet him!  Nevertheless, I give you this message to take to him!  Please tell him—­you will find him at his old address—­that I, his sister, Lady Saffren Waldon, know now the secret of Tippoo Tib’s ivory.  He is to join me here at once, and we will get it, and sell it, and have money, and revenge!  Will you tell him that!”

“No!” answered Monty.

I looked at Yerkes, Yerkes looked at Fred, and Fred at me.

There was nothing to do but feel astonished.

“Why not, if you please?”

“I prefer not to meet Captain McCauley,” said Monty.

“Then you will give the message to somebody else?” she insisted.

“No” said Monty.  “I will carry no message for you.”

“Why do you say that?  How dare you say that?  In front of your following—­your gang!”

I should have been inclined to continue the argument myself—­to try to find out what she did know, and to uncover her game.  It was obvious she must have some reason for her extraordinary request, and her more extraordinary way of making it.  But Monty saw fit to stride past her through his open bedroom door, and shut it behind him firmly.  We stood looking at her and at one another stupidly until she turned her back and went to her own room on the floor above.  Then we followed Monty.

“Did she say anything else?” he asked as soon as we were inside.  I noticed he was sweating pretty freely now.

“Didums, you’re too polite!” Fred answered.  “You ought to have told her to keep her tongue housed or be civil!”

“I don’t hold with hitting back at a lone woman,” said Yerkes, “but what was she driving at?  What did she mean by calling us a pack of mongrels?”

“Merely her way,” said Monty offhandedly.  “Those particular McCauleys never amounted to much.  She married a baronet, and he divorced her.  Bad scandal.  Saffren Waldon was at the War Office.  She stole papers, or something of that sort—­delivered them to a German paramour—­von Duvitz was his name, I think.  She and her brother were lucky to keep out of jail.  Ever since then she has been—­some say a spy, some say one thing, some another.  My brother fell foul of her, and lived to regret it.  She’s on her last legs I don’t doubt, or she wouldn’t be in Zanzibar.”

“Then why the obvious nervous sweat you’re in?” demanded Fred.

“And that doesn’t account for the abuse she handed out to us,” said Yerkes.

“Why not tip off the authorities that she’s a notorious spy?” I asked.

“I suspect they know all about her,” he answered.

“But why your alarm?” insisted Fred.

“I’m scarcely alarmed, old thing.  But it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that she wants us to believe she knows what we’re after.  She’s vindictive.  She imagines she owes me a grudge on my brother’s account.  It might soothe her to think she had made me nervous.  And by gad—­it sounds like lunacy, and mind you I’m not propounding it for fact!—­there’s just one chance that she really does know where the ivory is!”