“Yes, old boy. Besides, none of them can read anyway…”

“Then in the fourth message you go back to the original system, taking the fourth word and the last but three…”

“Yes, yes, I see. Don’t bother to explain any more. Just tell us what the message really says.”

“It says, ‘DAILY THREATENED WORSE THAN BREATH.’

“Her system’s at fault there, must mean ‘death’; then there’s a word I can’t understand—PLZGF, no doubt the poor child was in great agitation when she wrote it, and after that TRUST IN MY KING.”

This was generally voted a triumph. The husbands brought back the news to their wives.

“… Jolly ingenious the way old Stebbing worked it out. I won’t bother to explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand. Anyway, the result is clear enough. Miss Brooks is in terrible danger. We must all do something.”

“But who would have thought of little Prunella being so clever…”

“Ah, I always said that girl had brains.”

News of the discovery was circulated by the Press agencies throughout the civilized world. At first the affair had received wide attention. It had been front page, with portrait, for two days, then middle page with portrait, then middle page halfway down without portrait, and finally page three of the Excess as the story became daily less alarming. The cypher gave the story a new lease on life. Stebbing, with portrait, appeared on the front page. Ten thousand pounds was offered by the paper towards the ransom, and a star journalist appeared from the skies in an aeroplane to conduct and report the negotiations.

He was a tough young man of Australian origin and from the moment of his arrival everything went with a swing. The colony sunk its habitual hostility to the Press, elected him to the Club, and filled his leisure with cocktail parties and tennis tournaments. He even usurped Lepperidge’s position as authority on world topics.

But his stay was brief. On the first day he interviewed Mr. Brooks and everyone of importance in the town, and cabled back a moving “human” story of Prunella’s position in the heart of the colony. From now onwards to three millions or so of readers Miss Brooks became Prunella. (There was only one local celebrity whom he was unable to meet. Poor Mr. Stebbing had “gone under” with the heat and had been shipped back to England on sick leave in a highly deranged condition of nerves and mind.)

On the second day he interviewed Mr. Youkoumian. They sat down together with a bottle of mastika at a little round table behind Mr. Youkoumian’s counter at ten in the morning. It was three in the afternoon before the reporter stepped out into the white-dust heat, but he had won his way. Mr. Youkoumian had promised to conduct him to the bandits’ camp. Both of them were pledged to secrecy. By sundown the whole of Matodi was discussing the coming expedition, but the journalist was not embarrassed by any inquiries; he was alone that evening, typing out an account of what he expected would happen next day.

He described the start at dawn… “grey light breaking over the bereaved township of Matodi… the camels snorting and straining at their reins… the many sorrowing Englishmen to whom the sun meant only the termination of one more night of hopeless watching… silver dawn breaking in the little room where Prunella’s bed stood, the coverlet turned down as she had left it on the fatal afternoon…” He described the ascent into the hills—“… luxuriant tropical vegetation giving place to barren scrub and bare rock…” He described how the bandits’ messenger blindfolded him and how he rode, swaying on his camel through darkness, into the unknown. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the halt; the bandage removed from his eyes… the bandits’ camp. “… twenty pairs of remorseless eastern eyes glinting behind ugly-looking rifles…” here he took the paper from his machine and made a correction; the bandits’ lair was to be in a cave “… littered with bone and skins.”… Joab, the bandit chief, squatting in barbaric splendour, a jewelled sword across his knees. Then the climax of the story; Prunella bound. For some time he toyed with the idea of stripping her, and began to hammer out a vivid word-picture of her girlish frame shrinking in the shadows, Andromeda-like. But caution restrained him and he contented himself with “… her lovely, slim body marked by the hempen ropes that cut into her young limbs…” The concluding paragraphs related how despair suddenly melted to hope in her eyes as he stepped forward, handing over the ransom to the bandit chief and “in the name of the Daily Excess and the People of Great Britain restored her to her heritage of freedom.”

It was late before he had finished, but he retired to bed with a sense of high accomplishment, and next morning deposited his manuscript with the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company before setting out with Mr. Youkoumian for the hills.

The journey was in all respects totally unlike his narrative. They started, after a comfortable breakfast, surrounded by the well wishes of most of the British and many of the French colony, and instead of riding on camels they drove in Mr. Kentish’s baby Austin. Nor did they even reach Joab’s lair. They had not gone more than ten miles before a girl appeared walking alone on the track towards them. She was not very tidy, particularly about the hair, but, apart from this, showed every sign of robust well-being.

“Miss Brooks, I presume,” said the journalist, unconsciously following a famous precedent. “But where are the bandits?”

Prunella looked inquiringly towards Mr. Youkoumian who, a few steps in the rear, was shaking his head with vigour. “This British newspaper writing gentleman,” he explained, “e know all same Matodi gentlemen. E got the thousand pounds for Joab.”

“Well, he’d better take care,” said Miss Brooks, “the bandits are all round you. Oh you wouldn’t see them, of course, but I don’t mind betting that there are fifty rifles covering us at this moment from behind the boulders and bush and so on.” She waved a bare, suntanned arm expansively towards the innocent-looking landscape. “I hope you’ve brought the money in gold.”

“It’s all here, in the back of the car, Miss Brooks.”

“Splendid. Well, I’m afraid Joab won’t allow you into his lair, so you and I will wait here, and Youkoumian shall drive into the hills and deliver it.”

“But listen, Miss Brooks, my paper has put a lot of money into this story. I got to see that lair.”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” said Prunella, and she did.

“There were three huts,” she began, her eyes downcast, her hands folded, her voice precise and gentle as though she were repeating a lesson, “the smallest and the darkest was used as my dungeon.”

The journalist shifted uncomfortably. “Huts,” he said. “I had formed the impression that they were caves.”

“So they were,” said Prunella. “Hut is a local word for cave. Two lions were chained beside me night and day. Their eyes glared and I felt their foetid breath. The chains were of a length so that if I lay perfectly still I was out of their reach. If I had moved hand or foot…” She broke off with a little shudder…

By the time that Youkoumian returned, the journalist had material for another magnificent front-page splash.

“Joab has given orders to withdraw the snipers,” Prunella announced, after a whispered consultation with the Armenian. “It is safe for us to go.”

So they climbed into the little car and drove unadventurously back to Matodi.