conference with police. Coghlan and Laurie went with him to headquarters, in a cab.

Presently, there was some embarrassment. Mannard could not bring himself to tell so incredible a tale as that a book seven-hundred years old had had a seven-hundred-year-old message in it which said he was to be killed, and that the shot which had so narrowly missed him today seemed to be connected with it.

He doggedly told only the facts of the event itself. No, he had no enemies that he knew of. No, he had not received any message, himself, that he could consider a threat. He could not guess what was behind the attempt on his life.

The police were polite and deeply concerned. They assured him that Lieutenant Ghalil would be notified immediately. He had been assigned to a matter Mr. Mannard had mentioned before. As soon as it was possible to reach him....

That affair, inconclusive as it was, took nearly an hour of time. Mannard fumed, in the cab on the way back to the hotel.

"Ghalil's mixed up in this all the way through!" he said darkly. "It could be on orders, or it could be something else."

"I know he has orders," said Coghlan briefly. "And I think I know where he'll be. I'll hunt him up. Now."

The cab stopped before the Hotel Petra. Mannard and Laurie got out. Coghlan stayed in. Laurie said: "Take care of yourself, Tommy. Please!"

The cab pulled out into traffic and bounded for 80 Hosain with the mad, glad disregard for all safety rules which is the lifeblood of Istanbul taxicabs.

80 Hosain, by daylight, was even less inviting to look upon than it had seemed the night before. The street was narrow and unbelievably tortuous. It was paved with worn cobbles which sloped toward its center in the vain hope that rain would wash street-debris away. Because of its winding, it was never possible to see more than fifty feet ahead. When the building at last appeared, there was a police-car before it and a uniformed policeman on guard at the door. His neatness was in marked contrast to his squalid surroundings--but even so this section might have been a most aristocratic quarter in the times of the Byzantine Empire.

Coghlan was admitted without question. There was already an extensive process of cleaning-up underway. It smelled much less offensive than before. He went up the stairs and into the back 

 Prev. P 26/60 next