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of a plane has been found in the Arolez mountains, Two bodies. News will be released to the press tomorrow. Right?”
    Edmundson admitted that it was quite right.
    “We know all about things here,” said Colonel Pikeaway. “That's what we're for. Plane flew into the mountain. Could have been weather conditions. Some reason to believe it was sabotage. Delayed action bomb. We haven't got the full reports yet. The plane crashed in a pretty inaccessible place. There was a reward offered for finding it, but these things take a long time to filter through. Then we had to fly out experts to make an examination. All the red tape, of course. Applications to a foreign government, permission from ministers, palm greasing - to say nothing of the local peasantry appropriating anything that might come in useful.”
    He paused and looked at Edmundson.
    “Very sad, the whole thing,” said Edmundson. “Prince Ali Yusuf would have made a most enlightened ruler, with firm democratic principles.”
    “That's what probably did the poor chap in,” said Colonel Pikeaway. “But we can't waste time in telling sad stories of the deaths of kings. We've been asked to make certain - inquiries. By interested parties. Parties, that is, to whom Her Majesty's Government is well disposed.” He looked hard at the other. “Know what I mean?”
    “Well, I have heard something.” Edmundson spoke reluctantly.
    “You've heard perhaps, that nothing of value was found on the bodies, or among the wreckage, or as far as is known, had been pinched by the locals. Though as to that, you never can tell with peasants. They can clam up as well as the Foreign Office itself. And what else have you heard?”
    “Nothing else.”
    “You haven't heard that perhaps something of value ought to have been found? What did they send you to me for?”
    “They said you might want to ask me certain questions,” said Edmundson primly.
    “If I ask you questions, I shall expect answers,” Colonel Pikeaway pointed out.
    “Naturally.”
    “Doesn't seem natural to you, son. Did Bob Rawlinson say anything to you before he flew out of Ramat? He was in Ali's confidence if anyone was. Come now, let's have it. Did he say anything?”
    “As to what, sir?”
    Colonel Pikeaway stared hard at him and scratched his ear.
    “Oh, all right,” he grumbled. “Hush up this and don't say that. Overdo it in my opinion! If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't know, and there it is.”
    “I think there was something -” Edmundson spoke cautiously and with reluctance. “Something important that Bob might have wanted to tell me.”
    “Ah,” said Colonel Pikeaway, with the air of a man who has at last pulled a cork out of a bottle. “Interesting. Let's have what you know.”
    “It's very little, sir. Bob and I had a kind of simple code. We'd cottoned on to the fact that all the telephones in Ramat were being tapped. Bob was in the way of hearing things at the palace, and I sometimes had a bit of useful information to pass on to him. So if one of us rang the other up and mentioned a girl or girls, in a certain way, using the term 'out of this world' for her, it meant something was up!”
    “Important information of some kind or other?”
    “Yes. Bob rang me up using those terms the day the whole show started. I was to meet him at our usual rendezvous - outside one of the banks. But rioting broke out in that particular quarter and the police closed the road. I couldn't make contact with Bob or he with me. He flew Ali out that same afternoon.”
    “I see,” said Pikeaway. “No idea where he was telephoning from?”
    “No. It might have been anywhere.”
    “Pity.” He paused and then threw out casually:
    “Do you know Mrs. Sutcliffe?”
    “You mean Bob Rawlinson's sister? I met her out there, of course. She was there with a schoolgirl daughter. I don't know her well.”
    “Were she and Bob Rawlinson very close?”
    Edmundson considered.
    “No, I shouldn't say so. She