The smile had left Greve’s face and he looked rather grim. “You’re pretty deep, aren’t you?” was his brief comment. CHAPTER XX. THE CODE KING Major Euan MacTavish was packing. A heavy and well-worn leather portmanteau, much adorned with foreign luggage labels, stood in the centre of the floor. From a litter of objects piled up on a side table the Major was transferring to it various brown-paper packages which he checked by a list in his hand. The Major always packed for himself. He packed with the neatness and rapidity derived from long experience of travel. As a matter of fact, he could not afford a manservant any more than he could allow himself quarters more luxurious than the rather grimy bedroom in Bury Street which housed him during his transient appearances in town. The remuneration doled out by the Foreign Office to the quiet and unobtrusive gentlemen known as King’s messengers is, in point of fact, out of all proportion to the prestige and glamour surrounding the silver greyhound badge, an example of which was tucked away in a pocket of the Major’s blue serge jacket hanging over the back of a chair. “Let’s see,” said the Major, addressing a large brown-paper covered package standing in the corner of the room, “you’re the bird-cage for Lady Sylvia at The Hague. Two pounds of candles for Mrs. Harry Deepdale at Berlin; the razor blades for Sir Archibald at Prague; the Teddy bear for Marjorie; polo-balls for the Hussars at Constantinople—there! I think that’s the lot! Hullo, hullo, who the devil’s that?” With a groaning of wires a jangling bell tinkled through the hall (the Major’s bedroom was on the ground floor). Sims, the aged ex-butler, who, with his wife, “did for” his lodgers in more ways than one, was out and the single servant-maid had her Sunday off. Euan MacTavish glanced at his wrist watch. It showed the hour to be ten minutes past nine. A flowered silk smoking-coat over his evening clothes and a briar pipe in his mouth, he went out into the hall and opened the front door. It was a drenching night. The lamps from a taxi which throbbed dully in the street outside the house threw a gleaming band of light on the shining pavement. At the door stood a taxi-driver. “There’s a lady asking for Major MacTavish,” he said, pointing at the cab. The Major stepped across to the cab and opened the door. “Oh, Euan,” said a girl’s voice, “how lucky I am to catch you!” “Why, Mary,” exclaimed the Major, “what on earth brings you round to me on a night like this? I only came up from the country this afternoon and I’m off for Constantinople in the morning!” “Euan,” said Mary Trevert, “I want to talk to you. Where can we talk?” The Major raised his eyebrows. He was a little man with grizzled hair and finely cut, rather sharp features. “Well,” he remarked, “there’s not a soul in the house, and I’ve only got a bedroom here. Though we’re cousins, Mary, my dear, I don’t know that you ought to....”