close to the light in the roof.

It needed no great stretch of imagination to suggest a likeness
between the woman of the photograph and the other, of the golden
knife-hilt. And nobody, looking at him then, would have dared
suggest he lacked imagination.

If the knife had not been so ancient they might have been portraits
of the same woman, in the same disguise, taken at the same time.

"She knew I had been chosen to work with her. The general sent
her word that I am coming," he muttered to himself. "Man number
one had a try for me, but I had him pinched too soon. There must
have been a spy watching at Peshawur, who wired to Rawal-Pindi for
this man to jump the train and go on with the job. She must have
had him planted at Rawal-Pindi in case of accidents. She seems
thorough! Why should she give the man a knife with her own portrait
on it? Is she queen of a secret society? Well--we shall see!"

He sat down on his berth again and sighed, not discontentedly.
Then he lit one of his great black cigars and blew rings for five
or six minutes. Then he lay back with his head on the pillow, and
before five minutes more had gone he was asleep, with the cold
cigar still clutched between his fingers.

He looked as interesting in his sleep as when awake. His mobile
face in repose looked Roman, for the sun had tanned his skin and
his nose was aquiline. In museums, where sculptured heads of Roman
generals and emperors stand around the wall on pedestals, it would
not be difficult to pick several that bore more than a faint