friendliness. "I have a letter for you," said the Turk cheerfully. He passed it over. It was a neatly typed note, in English, on a letterhead that Coghlan could make out as that of the Ministry of Police--which is officially based in Ankara rather than Istanbul, but unofficially has followed the center of gravity of crime to the older city. The signature was clear. It was that of a cabinet minister, no less. The note said that at the request of the American, Mr. Mannard, Lieutenant Ghalil had been appointed to confer with Mr. Coghlan on a matter which Mr. Coghlan considered serious. The Minister of Police assured Mr. Coghlan that Lieutenant Ghalil had the entire confidence of the Ministry, which was sure that he would be both cooperative and competent. Coghlan looked up, confused. "And I thought you the suspicious character!" said Ghalil. "But you surely did the one thing a suspicious character would not do--call in the police at the beginning. Because you thought _me_ suspicious!" He chuckled. "Now, if you still have doubts, I can report that you wish to confer with a person of higher rank. But it will not be easy to get anyone else to take this matter seriously! Or in quite so amicable a manner, orders or no, in view of the implied threat to Mr. Mannard and my comparative assurance that you are innocent so far--" he smiled slightly--"of any responsibility for that threat." Coghlan had been thinking about that, too. He growled: "It's ridiculous! I'd just barely told Mannard about it last night, when he had an accident and almost got himself killed, and a third party who was along had the nerve to warn me--" Ghalil tensed. He held up his hand. "What was that?" Coghlan impatiently told of Mannard's tripping on the stairs. "A coincidence, obviously," he finished. Then, placing the defense before any offense: "What else?" "What else indeed?" agreed Ghalil. He said abruptly, "What do you think of 80 Hosain? You saw it last night." Coghlan shrugged his shoulders. The carload of them--Mannard, Laurie, Appolonius the Great and Coghlan--had driven deep into the Galata quarter and found 80 Hosain. It was a grimy, unbelievably ancient building, empty of all life, on a winding, narrow, noisesome alleyway. When the car found it, there were shabby figures gathered around, looking curiously at police outside it. Ghalil himself came to ask what the people in the car wanted. Then the whole party went into the echoing deserted building and up to the empty back room on the second floor. Coghlan could see and smell that room now. The house itself had been unoccupied for a long time. It was so old that the stone flooring on the ground level had long since worn out and been replaced by wide, cracked planks now worn out themselves. The stone steps leading to the second 

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