I hope and believe that I am as scrupulous as other people, but then and there came on me the conviction that I must read that telegram. I felt the gimlet eye of the housekeeper on me, so I had recourse to craft. I took out my cigarette case as if to smoke, and clumsily upset its contents amongst the shavings. Then on my knees I began to pick them up, turning over the litter till the telegram was exposed. It was in French and I read it quite clearly. It had been sent from Vienna, but the address was in some code. "_Suivez a Bokhare Saronov_"--these were the words. I finished my collection of the cigarettes, and turned the lid over again on the telegram, so that its owner, if he chose to look for it diligently, might find it. When we sat in the car going home, Jenkinson absorbed in meditation on the plaques, I was coming to something like a decision. A curious feeling of inevitability possessed me. I had collected by accident a few odd disjointed pieces of information, and here by the most amazing accident of all was the connecting link. I knew I had no evidence to go upon which would have convinced the most credulous common jury. Pavia knew Pitt-Heron; so probably did Lumley. Lumley knew Pavia, possibly was identical with him. Somebody in Pavia's house got a telegram in which a trip to Bokhara was indicated. It didn't sound much. Yet I was absolutely convinced, with the queer sub-conscious certitude of the human brain, that Pitt-Heron was or was about to be in Bokhara, and that Pavia-Lumley knew of his being there and was deeply concerned in his journey. That night after dinner I rang up Mrs. Pitt-Heron. She had had a letter from Tommy, a very dispirited letter, for he had had no luck. Nobody in Moscow had seen or heard of any wandering Englishman remotely like Charles, and Tommy, after playing the private detective for three weeks, was nearly at the end of his tether and spoke of returning home. I told her to send him the following wire in her own name. "_Go on to Bokhara. Have information you will meet him there._" She promised to send the message next day and asked no further questions. She was a pearl among women. CHAPTER III TELLS OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT Hitherto I had been the looker-on; now I was to become a person of the drama. That telegram was the beginning of my active part in this curious affair. They say that everybody turns up in time at the corner of Piccadilly Circus if you wait long enough. I was to find myself like a citizen of Bagdad in the days of the great Caliph, and yet never stir from my routine of flat, chambers, club, and flat. I am wrong; there was one episode out of London, and that perhaps was the true beginning of my story.