Together we marched down the slope of the quiet, suburban avenue; to take pause before
a small, detached house displaying the hatchet boards of the Estate Agent. Here we found
unkempt laurel bushes and acacias run riot, from which arboreal tangle protruded the
notice--"To be Let or Sold."
Smith, with an alert glance to right and left, pushed open the wooden gate and drew me in
upon the gravel path. Darkness mantled all; for the nearest street lamp was fully twenty
yards beyond.
From the miniature jungle bordering the path, a soft whistle sounded.
"Is that Carter?" called Smith, sharply.
A shadowy figure uprose, and vaguely I made it out for that of a man in the unobtrusive
blue serge which is the undress uniform of the Force.
"Well?" rapped my companion.
"Mr. Slattin returned ten minutes ago, sir," reported the constable. "He came in a cab
which he dismissed--"
"A few minutes after his return," the man continued, "another cab came up, and a lady
alighted."
"The same, sir, that has called upon him before."
"Smith!" I whispered, plucking at his arm--"is it--"
He half turned, nodding his head; and my heart began to throb foolishly. For now the
manner of Slattin's campaign suddenly was revealed to me. In our operations against the
Chinese murder-group two years before, we had had an ally in the enemy's camp--
Karamaneh the beautiful slave, whose presence in those happenings of the past had
colored the sometimes sordid drama with the opulence of old Arabia; who had seemed a
fitting figure for the romances of Bagdad during the Caliphate--Karamaneh, whom I had
thought sincere, whose inscrutable Eastern soul I had presumed, fatuously, to have laid
bare and analyzed.
