"He'll bluff sky-high," said Grim, "but keep on calling him."

"I've been searched at six frontiers," said Mabel. "If it's a Syrian I
don't much mind; you boys all come along, and he'll behave himself.
They're much worse in France and Italy. Hadn't one of you better take
the letter, though? No! I was forgetting already! I won't part with
it. I'll take my chance with the Syrian; he'll only ask me to empty my
pockets and prove that I haven't a bag full of gold under my skirt. Sit
tight, all, here he comes!"

The Frenchman returned with a smiling, olive-complexioned Syrian in tow
--a round-faced fellow with blue jaws as dark as his serge uniform. The
Frenchman stood aside and the Syrian announced rather awkwardly that
regulations compelled him to submit Mabel and me to the inconvenience of
search.

"For what?" said I.

"For gold," he answered. "It is against the law to smuggle it across
the border."

"I've only one gold coin," I said, showing him a U.S. twenty-dollar
piece, and his yellow eyes shone at sight of it. "If it will save
trouble you may have it."

I put it into his open palm with the Frenchman looking on, and it was
immediately clear that that particular Syrian official was no longer
amenable to international intrigue. He was bought and sold--oozy with
gratitude--incapable of anything but wild enthusiasm for the U.S.A. for