Page:Harold Lamb--Marching Sands.djvu/159

 "You are busy, Miss Hastings," he observed. "But I want to ask a favor. A half hour of your time."

The girl poised a pencil over her accounts doubtfully. Ram Singh scowled.

"We can talk here, Captain Gray," she compromised, "while I work. Sir Lionel wants these stores"

"We can't talk here very well," objected Gray. "What I have to say is important. Last night your uncle gave me some valuable information. I want to give you return value for it."

"Where?"

Mary Hastings had the brisk manner of one accustomed to transacting business. Gray learned later—after the disaster that came upon them in the Gobi—that she handled the routine work of her uncle's expeditions, and very capably, too.

"Outside here, in the garden," he suggested. She hesitated; then rose, reaching for her sun helmet. A dilapidated wall encircled the camp, and a few aloes struggled for existence by the tumble-down stones.

Mary climbed the stones, refusing assistance from the American, until she perched on the summit of the garden wall. Here she could overlook the activity in the camp as she listened.

A haze hung in the air—born of the incessant flurries of fine sand that burden the atmosphere in