and then we could have been friends, like two yolks in one eggshell.
But I see you're only a shell without a yolk in it. Who cleaned you?"

"How long have you been in the service of Ramsden effendi?" Yussuf
Dakmar asked him.

"Not long, and I am tired of it. He is strong, and his fist is heavy.
When he gets drunk he is difficult to carry upstairs to bed, and if I am
also drunk the feat is still more difficult. It is a mystery how such a
man as he should be entrusted with a secret mission, for he drinks with
anyone. Aha! He scowls at me because I tell the truth about him, but
if I had a bottle of whisky to offer him he would soon look pleasant
again, and would give me a drink too, when he had swallowed all he could
hold."

If he had really been my servant I would naturally have kicked him off
the train for a fraction of such impudence. I didn't exactly know what
to do. There is a thoughtful motive behind every apparently random
absurdity that Jeremy gets off, but I was uncomfortably conscious of the
fact that my wits don't work fast enough to follow such volatile
manoeuvres. Perhaps it's the Scotian blood in me. I can follow a
practical argument fast enough, when the axioms' are all laid down and
we're agreed on the subject.

However, Grim came to my rescue. He had his pencil out, and contrived
to flick a piece of paper into my lap unseen by Yussuf Dakmar.


Jeremy's cue is good [the note ran]. Dismiss him for talking about you
to a stranger. Trust him to do the rest.