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by the locals. Though as to that, you can never tell with peasants. They can clam up as well as the Foreign Office itself. And what else have you heard?”
    â€œNothing else.”
    â€œYou haven’t heard that perhaps something of value ought to have been found? What did they send you to me for?”
    â€œThey said you might want to ask me certain questions,” said Edmundson primly.
    â€œIf I ask you questions I shall expect answers,” Colonel Pikeaway pointed out.
    â€œNaturally.”
    â€œDoesn’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?”
    â€œAs to what, sir?”
    Colonel Pikeaway stared hard at him and scratched his ear.
    â€œOh, 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.”
    â€œI think there was something—” Edmundson spoke cautiously and with reluctance. “Something important that Bob might have wanted to tell me.”
    â€œAh,” said Colonel Pikeaway, with the air of a man who has at last pulled the cork out of a bottle. “Interesting. Let’s have what you know.”
    â€œIt’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!”
    â€œImportant information of some kind or other?”
    â€œYes. 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 quarterand the police closed the road. I couldn’t make contact with Bob or he with me. He flew Ali out the same afternoon.”
    â€œI see,” said Pikeaway. “No idea where he was telephoning from?”
    â€œNo. It might have been anywhere.”
    â€œPity.” He paused and then threw out casually:
    â€œDo you know Mrs. Sutcliffe?”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œWere she and Bob Rawlinson very close?”
    Edmundson considered.
    â€œNo, I shouldn’t say so. She was a good deal older than he was, and rather much of the elder sister. And he didn’t much like his brother-in-law—always referred to him as a pompous ass.”
    â€œSo he is! One of our prominent industrialists—and how pompous can they get! So you don’t think it likely that Bob Rawlinson would have confided an important secret to his sister?”
    â€œIt’s difficult to say—but no, I shouldn’t think so.”
    â€œI shouldn’t either,” said Colonel Pikeaway.
    He sighed. “Well, there we are, Mrs. Sutcliffe and her daughter are on their way home by the long sea route. Dock at Tilbury on the Eastern Queen tomorrow.”
    He was silent for a moment or two, whilst his eyes made a thoughtful survey of the young man opposite him. Then, as though having come to a decision, he held out his hand and spoke briskly.
    â€œVery good of you to come.”
    â€œI’m only sorry I’ve been of such little use. You’re sure there’s nothing I can do?”
    â€œNo. No. I’m afraid not.”
    John Edmundson went out.
    The discreet young man came back.
    â€œThought I might have sent him to Tilbury to break the news to the sister,” said Pikeaway. “Friend of her brother’s—all that. But I decided against