light and the noises of the city he felt braver and more confident.
He began to turn his thoughts earnestly and resolutely to his mission.
Swiftly, with a quick shock of memory, he remembered his talk with the old fortune-teller. It was with an unpleasant sense of chill and shock that he remembered her predictions.
Some strange sense of divination had told her of this sad news that waited for him. He could not explain or understand it. But there was more than this. It might be wild and foolish, but he could not thrust the woman's words from his brain.
She knew he was in quest of some one. She said he would be told . . .
He entered the yellow stone portico of the hotel with a sigh of relief. The hall was large, flagged, and cool. A pool of clear water was in the centre, glimmering green over its tiles. The eye rested on it with pleasure. Spence sank into a deck-chair and clapped his hands. He was exhausted, tired, and thirsty.
An Arab boy came in answer to his hand-clapping. He brought an envelope on a tray.
It was a cable from England.
Spence went up-stairs to his bedroom. From his kit-bag he drew a small volume, bound in thick leather, with a locked clasp.
It was Sir Michael Manichoe's private cable code—a precious volume which great commercial houses all over the world would have paid great sums to see, which the great man in his anxiety and trust had confided to his emissary.
Slowly and laboriously he de-coded the message, a collection of letters and figures to be momentous in the history of Christendom.
