Routledge smiled, because the last word had a big and new meaning. “Perhaps our voices will bother him. I’ll put the lad in the next room,” he said, and untangled the knotted muddy laces, placing the wet, worn shoes evenly before the fire. As he lifted the boy in his arms, the eyes opened sleepily, but Routledge could not see the face pressed against his shoulder. They were drowsy, startled eyes, wise and very shiny, like those of a mouse. Routledge laid him upon his own bed and dropped a blanket over him. “Poor little gaffer, you smell like Bookstalls Road,” he muttered. “I could pick you out blind among the odors of India. Nothing short of a riot could keep you awake, but poor old Jerry will talk easier with you here--and the door shut.” He drew his chair close to the other, and said genially: “And now, Jerry, tell me what is good for me to know.” “Did you have a ghastly night, son,--your first night at Home in over a year?” “I prefer to call it an interesting night.” “You are about to rise with cumulative glory. Do you remember our last talk in the field--the bivouac at Bhurpal?” Routledge nodded. “And you suggested that the spies of the Russian Bear had worked down over the hills, and looted certain startling secrets having to do with British India?” “It was only a suggestion. The facts are not clear to me yet. There was a colossal derangement somewhere--the same, I take it, that hurled England into alliance with Japan. I appear to be the only man in London who has been denied the truth.” Routledge reached for the amber-bit of his _nargileh_. “They say a man is last to hear what is going on in his own house.” “What is the parallel, Jerry?” “I’ve got to come to that. All London does not know--except that you are under a cloud for treachery. Forty men in London know exactly what has happened in India. Perhaps ten of this forty were at the reception last night. The forty believe you to be the man who turned the monster trick in Afghanistan, well-called the Buffer State. They are the exalted heads of Departments--Foreign, Home, Colonial, War, and Secret-service chiefs--men who live in the shadow of the Throne. Six, at most, of the correspondents are in the secret. The rest can’t tell what you did, but to them, just the same, you are the ranking Iscariot.... Routledge, how many men know the truth about Shubar Khan’s Lotus Expedition?” “Possibly the same forty men.” “And the soldiers of Colonel Hammond’s regiment?” “That is a historical mystery,” Routledge said. “Many are dead; the rest scattered and lost. The secret was miraculously preserved. Why, this is the masterpiece of England’s department of espionage.”