"Any comment, Mr. Ostrander?" Crawford said. Ostrander grunted, "Fuzzy thinking." Didn't bother with anything more. The chairman looked out over the hall. "Any further discussion, any motions?" He smiled and added, "Anything--period?" Finally Jake Armstrong came to his feet. He said, "I don't agree with everything Mr. Allen just said; however, there was one item where I'll follow along. The fact that most of us will be busy at this job for the rest of our lives--if we stick. With this in mind, the fact that we have lots of time, I make the following proposal. This meeting was called to see if there was any prospect of we field workers co-operating on a field worker's level, if we could in any way help each other, avoid duplication of effort, that sort of thing. I suggest now that this meeting be adjourned and that all of us think it over and discuss it with the other teams, the other field workers in our respective organizations. I propose further that another meeting be held within the year and that meanwhile Mr. Crawford be elected chairman of the group until the next gathering, and that Miss Cunningham be elected secretary. We can all correspond with Mr. Crawford, until the time of the next meeting, giving him such suggestions as might come to us. When he sees fit to call the next meeting, undoubtedly he will have some concrete proposals to put before us." Isobel said, _sotto voce_, "Secretaries invariably do all the work, why is it that men always nominate a woman for the job?" Jake grinned at her, "I'll never tell." He sat down. "I'll make that a motion," Rex Donaldson clipped out. "Second," someone else called. Homer Crawford said, "All in favor?" Those in favor predominated considerably. * * * * * They broke up into small groups for a time, debating it out, and then most left for various places for lunch. Homer Crawford, separated from the other members of his team, in the animated discussions that went on about him, finally left the fascinating subject of what had happened to the Cuban group in Sudan, and who had done it, and went looking for his own lunch. He strolled down the sand-blown street in the general direction of the smaller market, in the center of Timbuktu, passing the aged, wind corroded house which had once sheltered Major Alexander Gordon Laing, first white man to reach the forbidden city in the year 1826. Laing remained only three days before being murdered by the Tuareg who controlled the town at that time. There was a plaque on the door revealing those basic facts. Crawford had read elsewhere that the city was not captured until 1893 by a Major Joffre, later to become a Marshal of France and a prominent Allied leader in the First World War.