In old days he would have led a crusade or discovered a new road
to the Indies. Today he merely roamed as the spirit moved him, till
the war swept him up and dumped him down in my battalion.

I got out Sir Walter's half-sheet of note-paper. It was not the
original - naturally he wanted to keep that - but it was a careful
tracing. I took it that Harry Bullivant had not written down the
words as a memo for his own use. People who follow his career
have good memories. He must have written them in order that, if
he perished and his body was found, his friends might get a clue.
Wherefore, I argued, the words must be intelligible to somebody or
other of our persuasion, and likewise they must be pretty well
gibberish to any Turk or German that found them.

The first, '_Kasredin_', I could make nothing of.
I asked Sandy.

'You mean Nasr-ed-din,' he said, still munching crumpets.

'What's that?' I asked sharply.

'He's the General believed to be commanding against us in
Mesopotamia. I remember him years ago in Aleppo. He talked bad
French and drank the sweetest of sweet champagne.'

I looked closely at the paper. The 'K' was unmistakable.

'Kasredin is nothing. It means in Arabic the House of Faith, and
might cover anything from Hagia Sofia to a suburban villa. What's
your next puzzle, Dick? Have you entered for a prize competition