Lord Beauregard looked at his companion's anxious face. "Do you know the news?" he said.
"What news?" asked Wratislaw. "That your family position is changed, or that the dissolution will be a week earlier, or that Marka is busy again?"
"I mean the last. How did you know? Did you see the telegrams?"
"No, I saw it in the papers."
"Good Heavens!" said the great man. "Let me see the thing," and he snatched a newspaper cutting from Wratislaw's hand, returning it the next moment with a laugh. It ran thus: "Telegrams from the Punjab declare that an expedition, the personnel of which is not yet revealed, is about to start for the town of Bardur in N. Kashmir, to penetrate the wastes beyond the frontier. It is rumoured that the expedition has a semi-official character."
"That's our friend," said Wratislaw, putting the paper into his pocket.
Lord Beauregard wrinkled his brow and stared at the bowl of his pipe. "I see the motive clearly, but I am hanged if I understand why an evening paper should print it. Who in this country knows of the existence of Bardur?"
"Many people since Haystoun's book," said the other.
"I have just glanced at it. Is there anything important in it?"
"Nothing that we did not know before. But things are put in a fresh light. He covered ground himself of which we had only a second-hand account."
"And he talks of this Bardur?"
"A good deal. He is an expert in his way on the matter and uncommonly clever. He kept the best things out of the book, and it would be worth your while meeting him. Do you happen to know him?"
"No--o," said the great man doubtfully. "Oh, stop a moment. I have heard my young brother talk of somebody of the same name. Rather a figure at Oxford, wasn't he?"
Wratislaw nodded. "But to talk of Marka," he add.
"His mission is, of course, official, and he has abundant resources."
"So much I gathered," said Wratislaw. "But his designs?
"He knows the tribes in the North better than any living man, but without a base at hand he is comparatively harmless. The devil in the thing is that we do not know how close that base may be. Fifty thousand men may be massed within fifty miles, and we are in ignorance."
"It is the lack of a secret service," said the other. "Had we that, there are a hundred young men who would have risked their necks there and kept us abreast of our enemies. As it is, we have to wait till news comes by some roundabout channel, while that cheerful being, Marka, keeps the public easy by news of hypothetical private expeditious."