“He’s the General believed to be commanding against us in Mesopotamia. I remember him years ago in Aleppo. He talked bad French and drank the sweetest of sweet champagne.”
I looked closely at the paper. The “K” was unmistakable.
“Kasredin is nothing. It means in Arabic the House of Faith, and might cover anything from Hagia Sofia to a suburban villa. What’s your next puzzle, Dick? Have you entered for a prize competition in a weekly paper?”
“Cancer,” I read out.
“It is the Latin for a crab. Likewise it is the name of a painful disease. It is also a sign of the Zodiac.”
“V. I,” I read.
“There you have me. It sounds like the number of a motor-car. The police would find out for you. I call this rather a difficult competition. What’s the prize?”
I passed him the paper. “Who wrote it? It looks as if he had been in a hurry.”
“Harry Bullivant,” I said.
Sandy’s face grew solemn. “Old Harry. He was at my tutor’s. The best fellow God ever made. I saw his name in the casualty list before Kut. ... Harry didn’t do things without a purpose. What’s the story of this paper?”