Moslems are threatening trouble. There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark. And that wind is blowing towards the Indian border. Whence comes that wind, think you?” 

 Sir Walter had lowered his voice and was speaking very slow and distinct. I could hear the rain dripping from the eaves of the window, and far off the hoot of taxis in Whitehall. 

 “Have you an explanation, Hannay?” he asked again. 

 “It looks as if Islam had a bigger hand in the thing than we thought,” I said. “I fancy religion is the only thing to knit up such a scattered empire.” 

 “You are right,” he said. “You must be right. We have laughed at the Holy War, the jehad that old Von der Goltz prophesied. But I believe that stupid old man with the big spectacles was right. There is a jehad preparing. The question is, How?” 

 “I’m hanged if I know,” I said; “but I’ll bet it won’t be done by a pack of stout German officers in pickelhaubes. I fancy you can’t manufacture Holy Wars out of Krupp guns alone and a few staff officers and a battle cruiser with her boilers burst.” 

 “Agreed. They are not fools, however much we try to persuade ourselves of the contrary. But supposing they had got some tremendous sacred sanction—some holy thing, some book or gospel or some new prophet from the desert, something which would cast over the whole ugly mechanism of German war the glamour of the old torrential raids which crumpled the Byzantine Empire and shook the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant which will madden the remotest Moslem peasant with dreams of Paradise? What then, my friend?” 

 “Then there will be hell let loose in those parts pretty soon.” 

 “Hell which may spread. Beyond Persia, remember, lies India.” 

 “You keep to suppositions. How much do you know?” I asked. 

 “Very little, except the fact. But the fact is beyond dispute. I have reports from agents everywhere—pedlars in South Russia, Afghan horse-dealers, Turcoman merchants, pilgrims on the road to Mecca, sheikhs in North Africa, sailors on the Black Sea coasters, sheep-skinned Mongols, Hindu fakirs, Greek traders in the Gulf, as well as respectable Consuls who use 

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