Ibrahim the Egyptian, a Roman Catholic, as it seemed, had volunteered to act as dragoman. In a few hours this man had got together the necessary animals and equipment for the expedition to Nabulûs.

Spence rode a little grey horse of the wiry Moabite breed, Ibrahim a Damascus bay. The other men, a cook and two muleteers, all Syrians of the Greek Church, rode mules.

The day's march had been long and tiring. Night, with its ineffable peace and rest, was very welcome.

On the evening of the morrow they would be on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim, near to the homestead of the man they sought.

All the long day Spence had asked himself what would be the outcome of this wild journey. He was full of a grim determination to wring the truth from the renegade. In his hip pocket his revolver pressed against his thigh. He was strung up for action. Whatever course presented itself, that he would take, regardless of any law that there might be even in these far-away districts.

His passport was specially endorsed by the Foreign Office; he bore a letter, obtained by the Consul, from the Governor of Jerusalem to the Turkish officer in command of Nabulûs.

He had little doubt of the ultimate result. Money or force should obtain a full confession, and then, a swift rush for London with the charter of salvation – for it would be little less than that – and the engine of destruction for the two terrible criminals at home.

As they marched over the plains the red anemone and blue iris had peeped from the herbage. The ibex, the roebuck, the wild boar, had fled from the advancing caravan.

Eagles and vultures had moved heavily through the sky at vast heights. Quails, partridges, and plovers started from beneath the horses' feet.

As the sun plunged away, the owls had begun to mourn in the olive groves, the restless chirping of the grasshoppers began to die away, and as the stars grew bright, the nightingale – the lonely song-bird of these solitudes – poured out his melody to the night.

The camp had been formed under the shade of a clump of terebinth and acacias close to a spring of clear water which made the grass around it a vivid green, in pleasant contrast to the dry, withered herbage in the open.

The men had dug out tree roots for fuel, and a red fire glowed a few yards away from Spence's tent.

A group of silent figures sat round the fire. Now and then a low murmur of talk sounded for a minute and then died away again. A slight breeze, cool and keen, rustled in the trees overhead. Save for that, and the occasional movement of one of the hobbled horses, no sound broke the stillness of the glorious night.

It was here, so Spence thought, that the Lord must have walked with His disciples on the journey between Jerusalem and Nazareth.

On such a night as this the little group may have sat in the vale of El Makhna in quiet talk at supper-time.

The same stars looked down on him as they did on those others two thousand years ago. How real and true it all seemed here! How much easier it was to realise and believe than in Chancery Lane!

Why did men live in cities?

Was it not better far for the soul's health to be here alone with God?

Here, and in such places as these, God spoke clear and loud to the hearts of men. He shuddered as the thought of his own lack of faith came back to him.

In rapid review he saw the recent time of his hopelessness and shame. How utterly he had fallen to pieces! It was difficult to understand the pit into which he was falling so easily when Basil had come to him.

Now, the love of God ran in his veins like fire, every sight and sound spoke to him of the Christus Consolator.

It was more than mere cold belief, a love or personal devotion to Christ welled up in him. The figure of the Man of Sorrows was very near him – there was a great fiery cross of stars in the sky above him.

He entered the little tent to pray. He prayed humbly that it might be even thus until the end. He prayed that this new and sweet communion with his Master might never fade or lessen till the glorious daylight of Death dawned and this sojourning far from home was over.

And, in the name of all the unknown millions whom he was come to this far land to aid, he prayed for success, for the Truth to be made manifest, and for a happy issue out of all these afflictions.

"And this we beg for Jesus Christ, His sake."

Then much refreshed and comforted he emerged once more into the serene beauty of the night.

He lit his pipe and sat there, quietly smoking. Presently Ibrahim the Egyptian began to croon a low song, one of the Egyptian songs that soldiers sing round the camp-fires.

The man had done his term of compulsory service in the past, and perhaps this sudden transition from the comfortable quarters in Jerusalem to the old life of camp-fire and plein air had its way with him and opened the springs of memory.

This is part of what he sang in a thin, sad voice:

Born in Galiub, since my birth, many times have I seen the Nile's waters overflow our fields.

And I had a neighbour, Sheikh Abdehei, whose daughter's face was known only to me:

Nothing could be compared to the beauty and tenderness of Fatmé.

Her eyes were as big as coffee cups, and her body was firm with the vigour of youth.

We had one heart, and were free from jealousies, ready to be united.

But Allah curse the military inspector who bound my two hands,

For, together with many more, we were marched off to the camp.

I was poor and had to serve, nothing could soften the inspector's heart.

The drums and the trumpets daily soon made me forget my cottage and the well-wheel on the Nile.

The long-drawn-out notes vibrated mournfully in the night air.

Sadly the singer put his hand to one side of his head, bending as if he were wailing.

The quaint, imaginative song-story throbbed through many phases and incidents, and every now and again the motionless figures round the red embers wailed in sympathy.

At last came the end, a happy climax, no less loved by these simple children of the desert than by the European novel reader.

… So that I was in the hospital and had become most seriously ill.

But swifter than the gazelle, the light of my life came near the hospital.

And called in at the window, "Ibrahim! my eye! my heart!"

And full of joy I carried her about the camp, and presented her to all my superiors, leaving out none, from the colonel down to the sergeant.

I received my dismissal, to return to Galiub and to marry.

Old Abdehei was awaiting us, to bless us. God be praised!

So sang Ibrahim, the converted Christian, the Moslem songs of his youth; for here, in El Makhna, the plain of Shechem, there were no missionaries with their cold reproof and little hymns in simple couplets.

The fire died away, and they slept until dawn flooded the plain.

When, on the next day, the sun was waning, though still high in the western heavens, the travellers came within view of the ancient city of Nabulûs.

There was a great tumult of excitement in Spence's pulses as he saw the city, radiant in the long afternoon lights, and far away.

Here, in the confines of this distant glittering town, lay the last link in the terrible secret which he was to solve.

On either side the purple slopes of the mountains made a mighty frame to the terraced houses below. Ebal and Gerizim kept solemn watch and ward over the city.

The sun was just sinking as they rode into the suburbs. It was a lovely, placid evening.

The abundant cascades of water, which flow from great fissures in the mountain and make this Turkish town the jewel of the East, glittered in the light.

Below them the broad, still reservoirs lay like plates of gold.

They rode through luxuriant groves of olives, figs, and vines, wonderfully grateful and refreshing to the eye after the burnt brown herbage of the plain, towards the regular camping-ground where all travellers lay.

In the cool of the evening Spence and Ibrahim rode through the teeming streets to the Governor's house.

It was a city of fanatics, so the Englishman had heard, and during the great Moslem festivals the members of the various, and rather extensive, missionary establishments were in constant danger. But as the two men rode among the wild armed men who sat in the bazaars or pushed along the narrow streets they were not in any way molested.

After a ceremonious introduction and the delivery of the letter from the Governor of Jerusalem, Spence made known his business over the coffee and cigarettes which were brought immediately on his arrival.

The Governor was a placid, pleasant-mannered man, very ready to give his visitor any help he could.

It was represented to him that the man Ionides, who had but lately settled in the suburbs, was in the possession of some important secrets affecting the welfare of many wealthy residents in Jerusalem. These, it was hinted, were of a private nature, but in all probability great pressure would have to be put upon the Greek in order to receive any satisfactory confession.

The conversation, which was carried on in French, ended in an eminently satisfactory way.

"Monsieur will understand," said the Governor, "that I make no inquiry into the nature of the information monsieur wishes to obtain. I may or may not have my ideas upon that subject. The Greek was, I understand, intimately connected with the recent discoveries in Jerusalem. Let that pass. It is none of my business. Here I am a good Moslem, Allah be praised! it is a necessity of my official position."

He laughed cynically, clapped his hands for a new brass vessel of creaming coffee and continued:

"A political necessity, Monsieur, as a man of the world, will quite understand me. I have been in London, at the Embassy, and I myself am free from foolish prejudices. I am not Moslem in heart nor am I Christian – some coffee, Monsieur? – yes! Monsieur also is a man of the world!"

Spence, sitting cross-legged opposite his host, had smiled an answering cynical smile at these words. He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands. Everything depended upon making a good impression upon this local autocrat.

"Eh bien, monsieur avait raison-même – that, I repeat, is not my affair. But this letter from my brother of Jerusalem makes me of anxiety to serve your interests. And, moreover, the man is a Greek, of no great importance – we are not fond of the Greeks, we Turks! Now it is most probable that the man will not speak without persuasion. Moreover, that persuasion were better officially applied. To assist monsieur, I shall send Tewfik Pasha, my nephew, and captain commandant of the northern fort, with half a dozen men. If this dog will not talk they will know how to make him. I suppose you have no scruples as to any means they may employ? There are foolish prejudices among the Western people."

Spence took his decision very quickly. He was a man who had been on many battle-fields, knew the grimness of life in many lands. If torture were necessary, then it must be so. The man deserved it, the end was great if the means were evil. It must be remembered that Spence was a man to whom the very loftiest and highest Christian ideals had not yet been made manifest. There are degrees in the struggle for saintliness; the journalist was but a postulant.

He saw these questions of conduct roughly, crudely. His conscience animated his deeds, but it was a conscience as yet ungrown. And indeed there are many instruments in an orchestra, all tuneful perhaps to the conductor's beat, which they obey and understand, yet not all of equal eminence or beauty in the great scheme of the concert.

The violin soars into great mysteries of emotion, calling high "in the deep-domed empyrean." The flutes whisper a chorus to the great story of their comrade. Yet, though the plangent sounding of the kettle-drums, the single beat of the barbaric cymbals are in one note and unfrequent, yet these minor messages go to swell the great tone-symphony and make it perfect in the serene beauty of something directed and ordained.

"Sir," said the journalist, "the man must be made to speak. The methods are indifferent to me."

"Oh, that can be done; we have a way," said the Governor.

He shifted a little among his cushions. A certain dryness came into his voice as he resumed:

"Monsieur, however, as a man of the world, will understand, no doubt, that when a private individual finds it necessary to invoke the powers of law it is a vast undertaking to move so ponderous a machine?.. also it is a privilege? It is not, of course, a personal matter —ça m'est égal. But there are certain unavoidable and indeed quite necessary expenses which must be satisfied."

Spence well understood the polite humbug of all this. He knew that in the East one buys justice – or injustice – as one can afford it. As the correspondent of that great paper over which Ommaney presided, he had always been able to spend money like water when it had been necessary. He had those powers now. There was nothing unusual to him in the situation, nor did he hesitate.

"Your Excellency," he said, "speaks with great truth upon these points. It is ever from a man of your Excellency's penetration that one hears those dicta which govern affairs. I have a certain object in view, and I realise that to obtain it there are certain necessary formalities to be gone through. I have with me letters of credit upon the bank of Lelain Delaunay et Cie., of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Athens."

"A sound, estimable house," said the Governor, with a very pleased smile.

"It but then remains," said Spence, "to confer with the secretary of your Excellency as to the sum which is necessary to pay for the legal expenses of the inquiry."

"You speak most sensibly," said the Turk. "In the morning I will send the captain commandant and the soldiers to the encampment. My secretary shall accompany them. Then, Monsieur, when the little preliminaries are arranged, you will be free to start for the farm of this dog Ionides. It is not more than four miles from your camp, and my nephew will guide you there. May Allah prosper your undertaking."

" – And have you in His care," replied Spence. "I will now have the honour to wish your Excellency undisturbed rest."

He rose and bowed. The Turkish gentleman rose also and shook hands in genial European fashion.

"Monsieur," he said, with an expansive smile, "Monsieur is without doubt a thorough man of the world."

That night, in the suburbs of the city, sweet and fragrant as the olive groves and fig trees were, cool and fresh as the night wind was, Spence slept but little.

He could hear the prowling dogs of the streets baying the Eastern moon, the owls hooted in the trees, but it was not these distant sounds, all mellowed by the distance, which drove rest and sleep away. It was the imminent sense of the great issues of the morrow, a wild and fierce excitement which forbade sleep or rest and filled his veins with fire.

He could not quite realise what awful things hung upon the event of the coming day. He knew that his brain could not contain the whole terror and vastness of the thought.

Indeed, he felt that no brain could adequately realise the importance of it all.

Yet even that partial realisation of which he was capable was enough to drive all peace away, the live-long night, to leave him nothing but the plangent, burning thought.

He was very glad when the cool, hopeful dawn came.

The nightmare of vigil was gone. Action was at hand. He prayed in the morning air.

Presently, from the city gates, he saw a little cavalcade drawing near, twelve soldiers on wiry Damascene horses, an officer, with the Governor's secretary riding by his side.

Those preliminaries of a signed draft upon the bank, which cupidity and the occasion demanded, were soon over.

These twelve soldiers and their commandant cost him two hundred pounds "English"; but that was nothing.

If his own words were ineffective, then the cord and wedge must do the rest. It had to be paid for.

The world was waiting.

On through the olive groves and the vines laden with purple. On, over the little stone-bridged cascades and streams – sweet gifts of lordly Ebal – round the eastern wall of the town, crumbling stone where the mailed lizards were sleeping in the sun; on to the low roofs and vivid trees where the Greek traitor had made his home!

At length the red road opened before them on to a burnt plain which was the edge and brim of the farm.

It lay direct and patent to the view, the place of the great secret.

Ionides was waiting for them, under a light verandah which ran round the house, before they reached the building.

He had seen them coming over the plain.

A little elderly olive-skinned man, with restless eyes the colour of sherry, bowed and bent before them with terrified inquiry in every gesture.

His gaze flickered over the arms and shabby uniforms of the soldiers with hate and fear in it mingled with a piteous cringing. It was the look which the sad Greek boatmen on the shores of the Bosphorus wear all their lives.

Then he saw Spence and recognised him as the Englishman who had been the friend of Hands, and was at the meetings of the Conference.

The sight of the journalist seemed to affect him like a sudden blow. The fear and uneasiness he had shown at the first sight of the Turkish soldiers were intensified a thousand-fold.

The man seemed to shrink and collapse. His face became ashen grey, his lips parched suddenly, for his tongue began to curl round them in order to moisten their rigidity.

With a great effort he forced himself to speak in English first, fluent enough but elementary, and then in a rush of French, the language of all Europe, and one with which the cosmopolitan Greek is ever at home.

The captain gave an order. His men dismounted and tied up the horses.

Then, taking the conduct of the affair into his own hands at once, he spoke to Ionides with a snarling contempt and brutality that he would hardly have used to a strolling street dog.

"The English gentleman has come to ask you some questions, dog. See to it that you give a true answer and speedy. For, if not, there are many ways to make you. I have the warrant of his Excellency the Governor to do as I please with you and yours."

The Greek made an inarticulate noise. He raised one long-fingered, delicate hand to his throat.

Spence, as he watched, could not help a feeling of pity. The whole attitude of the man was inexpressibly painful in its sheer terror.

His face had become a white wedge of fear.

The officer spoke again.

"You will take the English pasha into a private room," he said sternly, "where he will ask you all he wishes. I shall post two of my men at the door. Take heed that they do not have to summon me. And meanwhile bring out food and entertainment for me and my soldiers."

He clapped his hands and the women of the house, who were peering round the end of the verandah, ran to bring pilaff and tobacco.

Spence, with two soldiers, closely following the swaying, tottering figure of Ionides, went into a cool chamber opening on to the little central courtyard round which the house was built.

It was a bare room, with a low bench or ottoman here and there.

But, on the walls, oddly incongruous in such a setting, were some framed photographs. Hands, in a white linen suit and a wide Panama hat, was there; there was a photograph of the museum at Jerusalem, and a picture cut from an English illustrated paper of the Society's great excavations at Tell Sandahannah.

It was odd, Spence thought gravely, that the man cared to keep these records of his life in Jerusalem, crowned as it was with such an act of treachery.

He sat down on the ottoman. The Greek stood before him, cowering against the wall.

It was a little difficult to know how he should begin; what was the best method to ensure a full confession.

He lit a cigarette to help his thoughts.

"What did Sir Robert Llwellyn give you? – how much?" he said suddenly.

Again the look of ashen fear came over the Greek's face. He struggled with it before he spoke.

"I am sorry that your meaning is not plain to me, sir. I do not know of whom you speak."

"I speak of him whom you served secretly. It was with your aid that the 'new' tomb was found. But before it was found you and Sir Robert Llwellyn were at work there. I have come to obtain from you a detailed confession of how the thing was done, who cut the inscription? – I must know everything. If not, I tell you with perfect truth, your life is not safe. The Governor has sent men with me and you will be made to speak."

He spoke with a deep menace in his tone, and at the same time drew his revolver from the hip pocket of his riding-breeches and held it on his knee.

He had begun to realise the awful nature of this man's deed more and more poignantly in his presence. True, he was the tool of greater intelligences, and his guilt was not so heavy as theirs. Nevertheless, the Greek was no fool, he had something of an education, he had not done this thing blindly.

The man crouched against the wall, desperate and hopeless.

One of the soldiers outside the door moved, and his sabre clanked.

The sound was decisive. With a broken, husky voice Ionides began his miserable confession.

How simple it was! Wild astonishment at the ease with which the whole thing had been done filled the journalist's brain.

The tomb, already known to the Greek, the slow carving of the inscription at dead of night by Llwellyn, the new coating of hamra sealing up the inner chamber.

And yet, so skilfully had the forgeries been committed, chance had so aided the forgers, and their secret had been so well preserved that the whole world of experts was deceived.

In the overpowering relief of the confession Spence was but little interested in the details, but at length they were duly set down and signed by the Greek in the presence of the officer.

By midnight the journalist was far away on the road to Jerusalem.