Let us explain the case in regard to the jovial von Hildemaller--a man who knew the inside of Mesopotamia almost as well as Douglas Pasha did. After all, though he might be a trader in dates, as indeed he professed, he was still before all a German. A German in heart and in thought; a German, above all, in ambition. Was it likely that he had come to Mesopotamia for the single purpose of trading in dates alone? Bearing in mind the fact that practically no German has left the Fatherland for some foreign country for the single purpose of following his own fortune alone, one may take it for certain that, like all the others, von Hildemaller also went on a mission for his Government. He was one of that enormous band which practised peaceful penetration for the Kaiser, who went armed with Government funds to some desirable spot in some still more desirable country, and who there made for himself a business which gave ample excuse for his remaining in the country. Yet all the while he was engaged, with Teutonic energy, in looking well about him, in discovering the secrets of the country, in ascertaining its defences, and in sending sheaves of notes to his Home Government. Let us say at once that this von Hildemaller was none other than the stout and genial German whom Commander Houston had come upon in Basra--the one whom he had indicated as von Schmidt--and from the gallant Commander we have already learned that, genial, and smiling, and friendly though this German trader might be, and very charming to those with whom he came in contact--whether they were Britons or not--yet behind his guise of merchant he was indeed a Government Agent--an energetic, far-seeing, and most likely an unscrupulous agent--placed in Asiatic Turkey for the one purpose of informing the Kaiser and his war lords of the doings of the Turks, of the British, and of the Russians; and kept there, ostensibly as a merchant, but really as a spy, to foster the ambitious designs of his countrymen. Did Douglas Pasha suspect this German? Did he realize that behind those smiling eyes and those wide curving lips there was a cunning brain and a lying tongue, ready to deceive and thwart him? If he did, he gave no indication of that fact. For he chatted easily, smiling back at the German in as friendly a manner as possible, apparently watching more closely the people passing to and fro in the Bazaar than the face and the figure of the man who had accosted him. It was with a hearty handshake and a friendly nod that he parted with the German, and went striding up through the Bazaar, past the hook-nosed Jew with whom he had appeared to bargain, and so on to the rooms he was occupying.