"Plenty of room in the car behind," I said abruptly.

They were five to one, but Yussuf Dakmar was in front, and he merely got
in the way of the wolves behind him. The sixth man, who had lingered
near the officers, now entered by the front end as I had done and called
out that there was plenty of room in the front compartment.

"There's only a woman in here," he said in Arabic.

And he set the example by taking the seat opposite to Mabel.

It would have been easy enough to get him out again, of course. Not even
the polyglot train crew would have allowed Arabs to trespass without her
invitation.

The trouble was that Jeremy, Grim, Narayan Singh and I all rushed to her
rescue at the same minute, which let the cat out of the bag. It was
Doctor Ticknor's statement in Jerusalem about not wanting to see any of
us alive again if we failed to bring his wife back safe that turned the
trick and caused even Grim to lose his head for a moment. When a Sikh,
two obvious Arabs and an American all rush to a woman's assistance
before she calls for help, there is evidence of collusion somewhere
which you could hardly expect a trained spy to overlook or fail to draw
conclusions from.

It was all over in a minute. The rascal left the compartment, muttering
to himself in Arabic sotto voce. I caught one word; but he looked so
diabolically pleased with himself that it didn't really need that to
stir me into action. I take twelves in boots, with a rather broad toe,