The morning air, heavy and sunny, lay as bland as Parisian air over Tangier.

"You mean, Sir Henry, that there will be something worse?"

"Oh, my wench, much worse. Unless I'm wrong, the biggest blowup is going to come tonight. See how frank I am?"

"Then there's a catch in it," declared Maureen Holmes. "Please, what could possibly happen, with Collier dead and nothing important in his papers about him or even Iron Chest?"

"Aren't you forgetting," said H.M., speaking carefully, "the person called Iron Chest?"

Abruptly he craned round to look through the large plate glass and make sure that his sedan chair with the bearers remained safely inside. In the street they had caught the curiosity of so large and fascinated a crowd that a tactful policeman suggested the change.

H.M., to tell the truth, had no idea where he was.

He knew he sat at an iron table, under the awning, of a terrasse, in a great, spacious, pleasant square which might have resembled a square in a large French provincial city if most of the buildings had not been white or dun-coloured instead of grey. Three tree-lined streets swept down into it; three more ascended it. Towards H.M.'s right and across the street some self-important building squatted in cool complacence behind a clipped lawn with an outer fringe of trees.

H.M., however, knew only that he was sitting at the little round table, with three cups of black coffee. Across from him sat Maureen Holmes, in a violet frock and dark violet-coloured shoes. Her pale complexion drew colour from the sun, so that the green eyes and black hair had a new warmth. Across from her sat Paula, considering her a trifle overdressed; Paula wore her usual white sleeveless silk frock, and bright sandals.

Both of them sheered away from the subject of Iron Chest.

"Last night. . Paula began hesitantly.

"Paula, it must have been horrible," said Maureen, putting her hand gently on Paula's shoulder. "I couldn't have stood it, I know. All those bullets . . ."

"Oh, I didn't mind the bullets so much." Paula raised one eyebrow reflectively. "In fact, I rather liked them, though nothing could have induced me to look at Collier's body afterwards." She shuddered. "No, I meant the fight. With that horrible, gross, hairy red robot hitting Bill." Paula spoke with her usual candour. "When Bill threw a right cross and knocked Collier silly, I had hysterics and made a dreadful show of myself. I'm sure I can't think why."

"But it was only natural," protested Maureen. "How is Bill now?"

"Oh, not bad. He's at the hotel. He can move about, of course. But he did get a little punishment. He prefers to lie in bed and read Zadig." Paula yawned, the lids of her eyes drooping. "You know, it's a hot morning. I think I shall go back and turn in myself."

"Juan," said Maureen, regarding her clasped hands, "was rather wonderful too, wasn't he?"

"Yes, dear. Silly-wonderful. Like both of them. And yet," said Paula thoughtfully, "that's how I should prefer them to be. How is Juan now?"

Maureen cast her eyes up to the sky in unembarrassed joy, before consulting a wrist watch.

"In fifteen minutes more," she said, "I'm going out to Dr. MacPhail's nursing home to see Juan. Don't you love Dr. MacPhail?"

"Love him?" repeated the literal-minded Paula. "Well, no. He's awfully nice, of course . . ."

"I mean," Maureen added rapidly, "He's got a head like a respectable Caesar. Didn't the old Romans paint their busts to make them lifelike?"

"Sure," growled H.M. sourly, "and a well-painted bust now . “

Maureen did not even hear him.

"I mean," she continued, "paint in blue eyes, and ruddy cheeks, and a little fair hair. That's Dr. MacPhail, except you haven't got the twinkle in his eyes or the competence of his manner. He won't let me see Juan too often. He says it's bad chemistry."

"H'm," agreed Paula, enlightened.

"And Juan isn't really hurt too badly," explained Maureen, "except that he didn't get attention soon enough for his chest wound. Dr. MacPhail puts all the blame on Sir Henry."

H.M.'s face turned the colour of a ripe eggplant.

"That's fine," he addressed the square in general. "That's the horn o' gratitude overflowing on my noodle with flowers and honey. If anything goes right, it's luck. If anything goes wrong, it's me. Burn my aunt's britches, that's done it."

Both girls, conscience-stricken, turned towards him. For a horrible instant H.M. really feared that both would make a fuss over him in public. But he glared at them, so like a lion over its haunch of meat, that both remained in their chairs.

"Who's done all the work in this case, hey?" he demanded. Putting down his Churchillian bowler hat, he dramatically opened the side of his coat, showing an inside pocket bulging with papers.

"Y'know," he added, his mood changing, "at the end of this month there'll be a bill for cables, sent by me, that'll stagger even Duroc. Here's one I got yesterday, and forgot even to tell the colonel. It's about the big girl from Madrid."

"What big girl from Madrid?" asked Paula, with faint interest.

"I'm telling you. There once was a . . . No, curse it, you'll have me on limericks again! But can't you remember evidence, when you hear it? There was a big, powerful woman who tried to grab the famous iron chest from the real, solid gold Iron Chest himself."

"Yes!" agreed Maureen, the contents of whose notebook remained in her hand.

"Well, she didn't touch it. That was some time ago. When he was about to fire, she now says she wriggled her hips like some danseuse. Only, instead of wriggling 'em to the left, she wriggled 'em to the right and got a bullet there. The point is—she now swears, unconfirmed by Madrid police, she saw Iron Chest's face. He was bald and had a moustache."

"Bald? Moustache?" Maureen and Paula exclaimed together.

"And here's another cable," H.M. continued in his martyr's tone, "about a policeman who every month is getting a payment as much . . . Bah!" he snorted, stuffing back both cables. "What do I get for all my concentrated work, hey?"

"But, according to the notes I put down," protested Maureen, "Iron Chest always wore a hat. How could the Spanish woman tell he was bald?"

For answer H.M. clapped on the bowler, and leered.

"Look, my wench. Couldn't you tell I hadn't got any fur on my onion? Except, of course—" Again he leered, and looked crafty.

Paula's voice was so demure that H.M. saw no trap.

"By the way, they did capture that man Aii and his four accomplices?"

"They did, my dolly. Oh, excepting the one your husband knocked dead as a mackerel out of an orange tree. Y'see, I understand this Mendoubia business now. The Mendoubia, or whatever you want to call it, is the Arab court. If an Arab is nabbed, he's questioned by the ordinary Tangier police. But, if they've accumulated enough evidence against him, they're bound to hand him over to the Mendoubia for trial. The Mendoubia is a just court, as that poor little Arab girl said last night. But its quality of mercy is strained pretty awful. They'd rather face this feller whose name I won't pronounce, because I'm sure to get it wrong; anyway, he's the devil."

Here H.M.'s countenance assumed a stern, austere look, like that of an English judge considering the judicial procedure of other countries.

"Y'see, my dolly, I'm awful afraid —in the near future, maybe—there's going to be hokey-pokey in this city."

"Dear Sir Henry," murmured Paula, putting her elbows on the table and gazing into his eyes. "Do tell me. Especially about the poor Arab girl."

H.M. shook his head darkly.

"Duroc says the Mendoubia is very anxious to interview an Arab crook they call the Father of Evil. Well! The Tangier police have spotted him, and they're ready to pounce. It wouldn't surprise me if Duroc made a little deal, an honest deal, though, with the head of the Mendoubia. In return for his handin' over the Father of Evil, they'd give Ali and company a light sentence. Of course that poor innocent girl would go free immediately, the only provision being' that she never saw Ali again. D'ye follow me, my dolly?"

"Definitely," said Paula.

She exchanged glances with Maureen.

"H'm," said Paula thoughtfully.

"Really, Sir Henry," burst out Maureen, with all her directness. "You said the stories about all these awful women were all a pack of lies! And at your age, too!"

"We-el, after all," smiled the broad-minded Paula, "why not?"

"I dunno what you're talkin' about," stormed H.M., giving them a look of awed astonishment which would have deceived his own mother. He became tragic again. "I go through life as good as gold, trying to be a big bulb in a naughty world. But if ever there's the least hokey-pokey, they say, 'That's the old man again.' "

"But isn't it? I mean—isn't it really?" asked Maureen in all seriousness.

"No. I'm a poor defenceless old man. They lead me about. I don't even know where I'm going, much less where I've been. Curse it, I don't even know where we are now!" He half stood up, craned his neck, and glared. "Where are we, anyway?"

"But this is the Place de France," said Paula. "The . . . what?"

"Yes, didn't you know? That smug-looking building over there is the French Consulate."

A look of pure evil gleamed in the eyes of one who had been so saintly.

"This is the square," said H.M., "that nobody's ever able to cross, under any circumstances whatever?"

"Well... I never thought much about it, until you began going on last night. But it's true."

"Hem," said the great man, settling his hat and buttoning his coat. "Back in a moment."

With a look of great innocence, his corporation marching before him, he made his way out among the tables to stand on the edge of the terrain. No motor car, not even a bicycle, moved in the drowsiness and glittering tree-heat of the Place de France.

On the metal cleats of the pedestrian crossing at the Boulevard Pasteur, a traffic policeman drowsed with a whistle in his mount. Two business-men were arguing their way down the rue du Fez into the square. A haughty French nursemaid was pushing a perambulator along the pavement past the consulate. H.M., considering, decided that the longest and best course was to walk obliquely across to the swing doors of the Cintra Bar far away.

"Hem," he repeated. And, at his lordly pigeon-toed stride, arms hooked at his sides, H.M. stepped out and began to cross the Place de France.

Considering the horror of this, it can only be conjectured that any witnesses were too paralyzed by its awfulness to move.

The traffic policeman, eyes flashing open, had the whistle in his mouth but stood petrified with the breath stuck in his throat. The haughty French maid, opening eyes of horror, let the pram get away from her and had to run for it. A slightly drunk law clerk, just emerging from the Cintra, put both hands over his eyes and bolted back inside.

Paula later declared that H.M. would have got fully halfway across—he was near it—if he had not been unintentionally betrayed by a waiter from their own cafe. The waiter came tearing out of the door with a tray of coffee cups and coffee glasses. He broke the spell by seeing the terrible sight and falling flat amid a crash of crockery and glass.

And then the cataract came down at Lodore.

If H.M. imagined he had heard many police whistles that night when they attempted to catch Collier in the rue Waller, he would have abandoned the thought now. The noise of police whistles seemed to deaden the brain. Policemen, springing up out of nowhere — there seemed to be at least fifty of them —poured across the square and surrounded the culprit.

They shouted, blew their whistles, waved their arms, or did all three, amid a roar in three languages. H.M. was also seen to be waving his hands, bellowing back in English and French. It is a curious fact that the two business-men, who had been descending the rue du Fez, turned and ran hard the other way. H.M. had now produced some bluish object, and was pointing to its unmentionable photograph. The tumult subsided to dead silence, except for one deep, stately voice in French.

"Here veritably," it intoned, "we have the old goodman himself."

Every policeman stood back and saluted. A whistle blew. Immediately they formed two lines in military formation, with H.M. in the middle of the front rank like their officer, and marched him back straight to the cafe from which he had started.

H.M., not at all displeased, gave a slight hem and turned round. He lifted his hand in salute.

Every man, palm outwards and together, saluted in reply.

"Well, now, thank'ee," said H.M.. deeply gratified. "You boys like a drink?"

They would have filled the whole cafe. Smilingly, declining in three languages because they were on duty, they melted away. H.M. sat down in his old chair, to a spatter of applause from nearby tables.

Paula, doubled up with joy, could not speak. Maureen was genuinely worried.

"What was it?" she asked.

"It was a swindle, like everything else." H.M. now spoke sourly. "No law of Charlemagne; no secret society; not one lightning bolt. But look there!"

He extended his hand, moving it slowly round in a circle.

"Rue Ensenar, boulevard Pasteur," he said, "rue dcs . . . I forget that one, rue du Fez, rue Belgique, rue du Statut. When the full tide of cars comes whistlin' down the up streets, and even jumps up from the down streets, to cross that square is the shortest way to the Pearly Gates. Cor, can't I believe it! Even for the drivers, I expect they've got to have a wrecking car and an ambulance standin' by. But why now? Burn it, there's not a car in sight. There's not . . ."

Down the rue Belgique a pink Buick shot like a demented rocket, screeching at the slight turn as it plunged into the boulevard Pasteur. The traffic policeman, by mere whim, had just elected to blow his whistle and extend his truncheon to stop traffic.

How the Buick did it, without knocking the policeman into a popcorn machine fifteen feet away, is a miracle known only to its makers. Its brakes screamed; they expected it almost to stand up on its haunches, but it stopped. Out of one window appeared the large hat and flowing moustachios of a very fat Italian.

"Scusa,"sighed the driver, in the liquid tongue of Dante.

The policeman, quite undisturbed, looked slowly and carefully out over a great square where not even a dog stirred. He blew his whistle, and signalled on the pink Buick, which instantly tore into top gear and shot like a rocket down the boulevard Pasteur.

H.M. pounded his fist on the table.

"They're all crackers, I tell you!" he insisted. "I knew it before; now I can prove it. Why am I messing about with Charlemagne and thunderbolts when there's real work for me? For instance, now. Yesterday, in my noble costume, I was rowed out in the harbour. .."

Maureen's curiosity had grown frantic,

"That's the second time I've heard you mention rowing out in the harbour," she protested. "What does it mean?"

"Ho," said H.M., and shut up one eye.

"He is without doubt," murmured Paula in a detached voice, "the most exasperating man I ever met. That Arab girl will poison him, Maureen; you mark my words." But Paula could not keep her detachment. "There's nothing in the harbour," she added, "except a very small cargo and passenger ship, the Valencia, I think. Bill and I saw it from the mint-tea tower night before last. And the next boat from Gib isn't due until. . ."

"Stop a bit!" soothed H.M. "What you've got to understand . , ."

At this point a heavy, thick-bodied woman in shiny black, her face daubed with powder, mascara, and lipstick like fly paper, sat down on the edge of H.M's chair, attempted by swinging her posterior to make room, and screamed deafeningly in his ear.

"Ha ha ha," coyly shrieked Ilone Scherbatsky. "You must be ze beeg droonkard! But you iss an Anglich lord and I vish to spik to you."

Now there are times which cannot be glossed over by the chronicler, when the behaviour of Sir Henry Merrivale must be considered as no less than deplorable. To certain ladies, even if in somewhat unorthodox fashion, he can be gallantry itself. To other ladies, those whom he considers unfeminine, his conduct cannot too deeply be lamented.

Thus, rising up slightly, H.M. swung his own mighty posterior slightly to the right for purchase and then swung it to the left like a battering ram. It caught Ilone Scherbatsky on the thigh, sending her flying from the chair and landing in a seated position beside the table.

Here H.M. bent down malignant spectacles.

"You smackin' well are ze damn nuisance," he stated clearly. "But you are not ze R-r-ussian countess and burn me if I vish to spik to you. Now sling your hook."

Ilone, who had always been treated with deep deference in the main because of her money, was so astounded and infuriated that she merely sat where she landed. Today she wore a black hat bearing the figure of a large white dummy cockatoo, from whose red beak dangled a tiny bell. It tinkled with each wave of agitation.

"Mark," she gasped. "You vill lift me from 'ere! Alzo you get me a chair."

None had noticed her approach, or that of Hammond. Hammond, in a very conservative brown suit and brown hat, was not now surrounded by an aura of gin. His fastidious mouth looked grim. With another powerful heave of his slender-looking shoulders, he set Ilone on her feet.

"I greatly fear," he said, "that all the chairs are occupied."

"Then get me one from one of zees . . . zees—" Her contemptuous look swept round.

"One day, Ilone," said Hammond politely, "your reputation for good nature will vanish too, and then nobody will tolerate you."

But Ilone had heard nothing. Suddenly observing Paula and Maureen, she screamed again, hurled out her arms, and pounced for both to give a lipsticky kiss.

"No, dear," said Paula in a dangerously gentle voice.

It must be repeated that Ilone Scherbatsky was no fool. She paused, bewildered. She did not know that the easygoing Paula, who had spoken only pleasant things of her, had heard from Bill through Colonel Duroc through H.M. of certain words in a tailor's shop yesterday.

Here Paula moved her arms and shoulders in a way which electrified several men on the pavement. Her imitation of Ilone was almost perfect.

"Ah, zis Bill!" cried Paula, with gestures. "He is Anglich. He is not amoureux. Ven 'e teach me ze pistol shoot, he do not visper pretty compliments to me; he do not touch me here, and here, and here."

Paula's normal voice returned. "And at target practice, too. Good heavens, who would? Why not at Alpine climbing?"

"Assez, assezl" screamed Ilone, holding out one hand tragically. "I forgive you. Hélas! I forgive everybody. Zat is my veakness. Besides, you are Anglich and all Anglich is cold."

"Do you think so, really?" sweetly inquired Paula, with a curious curl of her lips. Then her tone changed again. "Ah, un Francais! Quel amant! Always he look round for ze voomans in company! He do not go to clubs and get dronk, no! He is not com-for-table with his own sex.. . .If I had a husband who never wanted to go to his club and get drunk with his male friends," burst out Paula, who was English to the core, "I'd pretty well know all he was good for! What do you know of real love, you old harpy?"

"I forgive you!" repeated Ilone. "Zat is my veakness. I am a R-ru-us — " Here she stopped, remembered something, and looked at the glowering H.M. "Zis big droonkard has called me vat I am not! I ask heem—vy?"

Hammond, trying to shush her, gave Ilone an angry look. But both regarded H.M. in an odd way, as though they had some vague memory of having seen him somewhere before. They did not recognize that forgotten holy man, Hassan-el-Mulik.

"I am insult!" persisted Ilone. "Vy you say zat?"

"Ma'am," glared H.M, "your accent is so polyglot and generally messed up that it's hard to tell what you originally were. You interchange v's and w's in just the wrong places. No French person, in spite of all fiction, ever has or ever will say 'ze' or 'zat.' No, the sound is like 'de' or 'dat.' But the Teutonic peoples give you 'ze' and 'zat.' So do lots of Russians. You might even be Russian, though I think you're from Hungary."

"I am ze Countess Scherbatsky, vife of ze Count Scherbatsky!"

"Well, you may be," said H.M. "But in an awful dull novel, by an awful dull writer named Tolstoi —its called Anna Karenina—there's a very aristocratic old gal named the 'Princess Scherbatsky.' Maybe the author just invented her; maybe your husband stuck his birth in a fine old line. Or maybe Mark Twain opened Burke's Peerage and found the Duke of Bilgewater. Like to make a little bet?"

Ilone, merely livid and speechless, did not even make a gesture.

"I knew it," whispered Paula. "I told Bill the title was a fake."

"For many years," Hammond remarked gloomily, "I have been wondering when somebody would spot that. Though I can't agree with your poor view of Tolstoi," he glanced at Ilone, "I'm afraid the lady is in one of her less malleable moods. Shall I get you a taxi, Ilone?"

Ilone paid no attention. She was dancing with both feet on the pavement in time to the bell on her hat, while she advanced her face menacingly towards H.M's.

“I moost g-know vat go on!" she shrieked. "1 must be au fait— vous avez compris? — or I die. Yes, I die. Here! I learn only"—for enlightenment it must be remembered that you cannot strike a match in Tangier without someone learning of it-"zat Bill Bentley has knock out Collier in ze firs' round, and afterwards zey shoot Collier full of bullets." She thrust out her face towards H.M, "Now you tell me—vat else is zere to learn?"

"Ma'am," said H.M., sticking his unmentionable face almost in her face, "I wouldn't tell you if you did die on the pavement. There's a very pleasin' spot just there," he added hopefully.

"No?" shrieked Ilone, drawing up and back dramatically. "Zen I tell you vat you do not know! Yes! It is a rumour which run ze streets of all Tangier. Iron Chest, zis criminal, is in fact a vooman!"

"What on earth ..." began Maureen, her green eyes wide-open. But Paula, her good humour restored, merely giggled and shushed her.

"A vooman?" yelled Ilone—and made her great dramatic gesture.

Leaping sideways out into the road, flinging up her arm like the Statue of Liberty, and shouting, "Taxi," Ilone was nearly murdered by a Citroen taxi which sprang straight at her and all but ran her down. At the same moment they heard the rattling and grinding of a jeep dashing full speed down the rue Belgique; they watched it crash into a turn.

Ilone leaped into the cab. Only by inches did the jeep avoid smashing against the back of the Citroen, which shot off down the rue du Statut. Still there was a general impression that the jeep meant to proceed straight into the cafe, except that its magnificent reeling turn brought it up full sideways to the curb. Hammond walked away in another direction, seeking gin.

Out of the jeep, with strutting majesty and the driver behind him, stepped Colonel Duroc.

He did not speak, though his eye indicated that he might have everybody present hanged at any moment. Strutting over to the table of Sir Henry Merrivale, he murmured into H.M.'s car.

"Enough!" he said. "Now we will have the lunch and make the conference. You whisper. You hint. You shake. But this night, I ask, what is to happen?"

H.M. suddenly yanked down the Colonel's head so that nobody heard his whisper in reply.

"Maybe not much," he said. "But Iron Chest, the real Iron Chest in person, will try to crack Bernstein and Company tonight."

At this point, both Paula and Maureen made their excuses to leave. H.M. and the Colonel adjourned to the restaurant Ciro in the rue Raphael nearby, for a lunch which lasted over four hours.

And then the shadows lengthened down from the Old Mountain, over an ancient and half-dry river, up and down again over ridges of Franco-Spanish villas, and presently became greyish-blue even in the winking lamps of Tangier.

H.M., at his lunch conference, had outlined to the Colonel exactly one-half—no more—of the plan he had in mind. Determined to be the Old Maestro if it choked him, he meant to execute the remainder himself. Only two questions, repeated endlessly, hammered on at the argument.

"Then you will swear this is to happen?" inquired Duroc, tapping the table.

"No, no, no! Nobody can do that. It may be tonight, or tomorrow, or a week after Whitsun. All I'm doing is gamblin' on Iron Chest's character for tonight. What's bothering you?"

Duroc, his tufted eyebrows drawn down over blue penetrating eyes, looked suspicious.

"I tell you in frankness," he said. "I fear the hoke-poke."

"What d'y mean, the . . . Oh, I see." H.M. scowled. "Y'know, Colonel, you honestly do speak very good English."

"Un petit peu, peut-etre," replied the well-gratified Colonel, turning out his wrist in a deprecating way. "I have been much with the British Army as with the Belgian. The best I know of English is too indecent to speak. But also I read your great poets, Ben Shakespeare and the rest."

"What I mean," persisted the purist H.M, "is that just lately you've been using some awful English phrases; and curse me," he added, completely baffled, "if I can tell where you got 'em."

"You do not know, by burn?" asked the astounded Colonel. "Well, no matter then. But I repeat: I have heard too much of this Chief Inspector Masters. Always you try to do him in the eye. I ask myself: do you wish to do me in the eye too, Cain and Abel?"

"Look here," said H.M. "When you and your crowd raided a certain place in the block of flats at 40-bis Marshan last night, did you get a hatful of diamonds or not? You did! Did your coppers shoot Collier as dead as a doornail? They did! And"—H.M. reached for a handful of newspapers from the nearest table—"are they whoopin' you up as a detective like Lecoq and Rouletabille and Arsene Lupin rolled into one? Honest, now, would I do you in the eye?"

"We-el," deprecated the other, his chest swelling nevertheless. "Come! When you tell me of the vanish tricks, and I myself deduce who is the real criminal . . . Stop! Enough. We try your scheme."

Thus they had left the restaurant, Colonel Duroc in his jeep to set the wires humming, H.M. (strangely) on foot for another mysterious errand into the Kasbah and elsewhere. So the shadows gathered, strengthening, down from the Old Mountain, turning to greyish-blue and then to purplish-black.

The electric lamps of the New Town grew harder and brighter against it; the maps of the Old Town, from electric to tallow, crept out and up their snaky hill. The Little Socco woke up and spiritually began to dance. Behind discreet curtains, roulette wheels prepared to hum and cards to slide smoothly from the show. Manslaughter was being prepared in the Place de France.

But it was not until a little past ten o'clock—they had allowed a later hour for the appearance of Iron Chest — that Sir Henry Merrivale lumbered down the rue du Statut from the Place de France.

Though H.M. has no nerves to speak of, he was playing a dangerous game and he knew it. Once or twice he growled to himself. He passed the middle slope of the descending street, all white fronts with separated gilded letters, with the Minzeh Hotel now on his right and the premises of Messrs. Cook on his left.

He did not alter his step, on the left-hand pavement, until he neared the scene of their first adventure. The directions being reversed, the rue du Midi lay to the left with the bank at the corner; on his right the steps and incline down into the rue Waller. At the corner was the one dim street lamp, intensifying shadow beyond.

At a curious waddle he crossed the rue du Midi, sensing two skulkers in a doorway on the other side. At his left, beyond two doors, he saw the now very dark alley at the side of Bernstein et Cie. Across the two glass-fronted windows of the jeweller's, the folding steel network was closed and heavily locked, as H.M. discovered by twisting the lock.

He drifted only a few feet farther on, glancing into the black dusty window across which ran the enamelled letters, "Louisa Bonomi: Masks and Costumes," in two languages.

Pure grotesqueness looked him in the face, and ran through his mind. Seen closely, a half-circle of masks swung across the inside of the window. They were of papier-mache or rubber, painted or unpainted, all with blank eyes or sometimes gaping mouths. Long curls of hair hung between them: Just behind them stood the dummy figure of a policeman and the dummy figure of the Moslem devil.

Putting out his hand, making sure the door was locked as it should be, H.M. turned and stood a few steps back towards the jeweller's. He was a dim shape in his black alpaca suit and bowler. Another dark shape in civilian clothes, squat and thick, loomed up beside him.

"I have you, then, old joker," familiarly chuckled Acting Commandant Perez in French. "S-sst, all goes well?"

"All goes well, my assassin," agreed H.M.

"Now tell me," whispered Perez, nodding across the street, "is he in truth a man of yours, as he says?"

H.M. had seen, but not chosen to notice. Lounging against the wall on a sort of cat-walk pavement past the wall of a closed shop, there stood a lean, wild figure possibly intended to represent a Spaniard as conceived in the nightmare mind of Hollywood. In his hands, with long powerful fingers, he held a guitar. He wore an immense flopping hat, and tight-fitting red trousers with pearl buttons encased the long legs.

"He is silent now," continued Perez. "But for half an hour and more he screeches hideously at singing, and he is the original murderer of a guitar. Who is he?"

In partial answer, the very tall and lean man ripped his hand across the strings. Out poured the voice, strong yet hoarse and melancholy, of one who has not seen his homeland for twenty-five years.

Tyke me back to dear old blighty,

Put me on the tryne for London Town . . .

"Not so loud," H.M. called across the road. The voice dropped to a melancholy yowl.

"I used to know the type," continued H.M. in French. "I have found him here in a bar. He was once the fastest sprinter in the Kensington Light Infantry Territorials."

"Ah, my old fox," chuckled Perez. "Good."

"Very sure, my green pig," H.M. assured him. "I figure to myself, now, what you were thinking. When the dead Collier has tried to rob this jeweller, on the roof opposite sits a fat Italian with a guitar. You have wondered to yourself whether the loud singing and playing would conceal the noise of an electric drill?"

"It is not for nothing," growled Perez, "they call you the old goodman."

"Yet one remembers," said H.M., "that, when the alarm of burglars begins, this Italian has dropped his guitar and smashed. No, my cauliflower! No accomplice would have been so surprised he dropped his guitar. That man was what he pretended to be. My man across the street is there to watch and be ready to run. Where now is the Colonel?"

"By here," muttered Perez, and they turned into the dark alley.

"Yours was good advice," Perez continued. "There are two of our best men across the street. Sergeant Garcia and I are at the back of this alley. The Colonel is inside the office of the safe with Sergeant Bonfleur. Fewer watchers, but better placed, so you said once. Good!"

Perez tapped —two long, two short knocks—at the side door of Bernstein et Cie.

It is a sober fact that a bead of sweat ran down from inside H.M's bowler hat, and trickled across his face.

He knew now that what he expected was going to happen, and happen within a few minutes. But he could not tell when, in this few minutes. He must not waste too much time, yet. . .

"Enter," said Colonel Duroc in French. H.M. lumbered in, while the Acting Commandant moved on to the back of the alley.H.M. closed the solid door. It was not quite darkness, in which he could vaguely see the forms of Colonel Duroc and another man.

"By blue," softly swore the Colonel, "this time I cannot see how Iron Chest has any chance whatever. Look there!"

The beam of a torch hooded in tissue paper moved across the room up the surface of the untouched, untouchable surface of the safe. H.M. stood with his back to the door, which was ordinarily secured by a heavy spring lock, a bolt, and a key. H.M. tapped the door.

"Do you leave this door unlocked?" he asked.

"Of course!" gritted back the Colonel. Without sound, after his magician's tactics as related elsewhere, H.M. eased the key out of the door and palmed it in his right hand. Then he began slowly to open the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the startled and alarmed Colonel.

"S-sst! One goes for a little promenade. One will take care."

"Be sure!" hissed Duroc. "The Sultan's diamonds, uninsured, are in that safe as a trap. If Iron Chest creeps into the safe, if anything should go wrong, we are armed to the eyebrows and we shoot."

Another bead of sweat ran down under H.M.'s hat. Soon now, very soon ...

Slipping out of the door, H.M. closed it and for a moment stood casually with his back to it. From the rear of the alley, of course, Perez and Garcia could dimly see him silhouetted against faint light from the street. Hands behind his back, H.M.'s right hand slipped the key into the lock from outside. Without any noise even when the key turned, he locked it from outside and pocketed the key.

Stealthily he crept to the mouth of the alley, turned round and to the left, and began to edge back up the rue du Statut with one hand trailing over the folding steel work across the front of the jeweller's store. It was silent except for noise and movement in the Grand Socco at the end of the street.

Not minutes, now. How many seconds?

Across the street, from the Cockney in disguise, voice and guitar were homesick with an old song:

We are Fred Kama's army,

The ragtime in-fan-tree,

We cannot fight,

we cannot march,

What goddam use are we?

Then it happened.

A considerable distance away but seeming nearer, and from the harbour, a broad flare of yellow-white light sprang high above all Tangier. The immense crash of the explosion, as the little cargo and passenger ship Valencia blew to pieces without a soul aboard, stunned even those who were used to high explosive in earlier days.

Sir Henry Merrivale threw out his arm towards his confederate across the street. The Cockney, crying out in fluent Spanish that he had just seen a man with an iron chest rushing up from the Grand Socco, himself raced down. Hair-trigger emotions leaped too soon. Out from one doorway shot two men, flying after the Cockney. Out from the alley flashed Perez and Garcia, also running hard in the same wrong direction.

H.M., now at the door of the mask and costume shop, whipped out another key and put it into the lock. This duplicate key he had cut from a mould taken yesterday and secretly, on a piece of soap, while he and good Senora Bonomi debated his costume as Hassan-el-Mulik.

Twisting the key, opening the door creakily, H.M. closed it behind him. The shop, with a faint glow that showed white and ghastly mask faces, was densely full of smoke with a bitter tang in it: smoke from a smaller explosion designed to be covered by the first. In it glimmered an electric torch.

"That's enough, Iron Chest," H.M. declared. "Now come out from behind that smoke. Hurry!"

The torch winked.

"I was afraid of this," said a familiar voice.

And, ducking through the smoke, coughing, but with hands raised and left eye still battered, stood up the figure of Bill Bentley.

For a moment they stared at each other, while Bill kept the light on the floor.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked, holding out his hands as though for handcuffs.

"Well, what's the matter with_you?" said H.M. in a kind of muffled bellow. "I'm not here to arrest you or capture you. I'm here to get you away, out of Tangier and into a safe place for good. Yes, yes, don't tell me; your wife didn't know one single thing about your career as Iron Chest; but I told her and she adores you for it. The special plane's ready for both of you. Now follow me and run like blazes!"