searched my own pockets reluctantly, and said that we might as well take
the next train back, since we had lost the important document.

Before we started we had put into a wallet the fake envelope that Grim
had carried in his hand the previous night, and had entrusted the wallet
to Jeremy in order to have an alibi ready for Mabel in case of need.
Grim took up the cudgels now and reminded me respectfully, as a servant
should when speaking to his master, that I had taken all proper
precautions and could not be blamed in any event.

"But I think it will be found," he said hopefully. "Inshallah, it is
not lost, but in the wallet in the pocket of that hare-brained friend of
yours."

So Jeremy went back to his corner, searched for the wallet, found it
after pretty nearly, standing on his head to shake his clothes, examined
it excitedly, and produced the fake envelope, flourishing it so
violently that nobody, even with eyes like a hawk's, could have
identified it with certainty.

Then he dropped it in among the baggage on the floor, and went down on
his knees to pick it up again. There is no more finished expert at
sleight of hand than he, so it vanished, and he swore he couldn't find
it. In a well-simulated agony of nervousness he called on Yussuf Dakmar
to get down and help him search, and the Syrian hadn't enough
self-command left to pretend to hesitate; his cold eyes were nearly
popping from his head as he knelt and groped. The chief subject of
interest to me just then was how he proposed to retain the letter in the
unlikely event of his finding it first.