letter.

Grim and Jeremy, all grins, joined us at once in Mabel's compartment.

"Did you see the devil smirk as he went off with it?" asked Jeremy.
"Golly, he thinks we're fools! The theory is that we two had betrayed
you, Rammy, and swapped the letter against his bare promise to pay us in
Damascus. He chucked in a little blackmail about sicking his mates on
to murder us if we didn't come across, and I tell you we fairly love
him! Lordy, here's Deraa! If they open the thing before the train
leaves, Grim says the lot of us are to bolt back across the border, send
Mabel home to her husband, and continue the journey by camel. That
right, Grim?"

Grim nodded. It was Mabel who objected.

"I'm going to see this through," she answered. "Guess again, boys! My
hair's gone gray. You owe me a real adventure now, and I won't give up
the letter till you've paid!"

We had one first-class scare when the train drew up in the squalid
station, where the branch line to Haifa meets the main Hedjaz railway
and the two together touch a mean town at a tangent; for a French
officer in uniform boarded the train and stalked down the corridors
staring hard at everyone. He asked me for a passport, which was sheer
bluff, so I asked him in turn for his own authority. He smiled and
produced a rubber stamp, saying that if I wished to visit Beirut or
Aleppo I must get a vise from him.

"Je m'em been garderai!" I answered. "I'm going to see my aunt at