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 no trouble about passports for yourself and your daughter. No trouble either about the journey—anything my department can do to make the trip comfortable—anything at all—pray command me!”

He lit a fresh cigar.

“I have already said a word or two to the local agent of the Ameer of Afghanistan,” he went on, “and you will be passed straight through that country. On the other hand …”

He coughed, and was silent for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts.

He was in a quandary.

For he was a servant of that intricate and extremely complicated machinery for civilization, progress, and the blessed average decencies called the British Empire, that world-flung organization which spreads like a fine-mesh net over the whole globe and in which, through logical consequence, there are many currents and undercurrents, often one government department giving orders or recommendations completely at variance with those of another, every bit as important, department.

And, while he had received instructions from the India Office to put himself absolutely at the disposition of Mr. Warburton and to make that gentleman's trip to the North as easy and pleasant as possible, another department, closely connected with the Home Office in London, had asked him, quite sub rosa and quite decisively, to see to it that the American's journey to Tamerlanistan should be delayed at least two or three months.