THE MOSQUE OF THE ROSES. By Harold Armstrong. (The Bodley
Head. 7s. 6d.)—When Mr. Gordon offers both port and cigars simultaneously to the hero, Captain Sanford, we suspect him of being an evil fellow. When further his daughter, Eve, whom the hero loves, flushes scarlet at their good-bye interview and hurries away like some hunted thing, we gather that there is likely to be dirty work in the course of Captain Sanford's perilous mission to Turkey. And we are both right and wrong, as we should be in an adventure story. The fate of the Empire depends on some despatches that Captain Sanford is taking to Con- stantinople : he takes every precaution to safeguard them, of course, but the poor man has a ghastly journey. First a sinister under-footman almost causes him to miss his train at Charing Cross, then a girl with dark-brown eyes and a cloche hat attempts to " vamp " him, also a German- American-Jewess with a disarming smile and husky voice ; finally a bullet-headed pugilist assaults him in a scrimmage in the dining car. Asleep at last in his wagon-lit, a hand " stealthy and sinuous as a snake " opens the connecting door and feels its way towards him in the darkness. He pretends to be asleep and sees there is a syringe in the hand : he attempts to seize it, but it vanishes with mocking laughter. In Constantinople he is arrested by the Turkish police but contrives to outwit them. Mr. Armstrong knows his Con- stantinople backwards and forwards : his hero- plunges into the trellised alley-ways of old Stamboul, and engages in a nightmare struggle with lepers, smugglers, detectives, police, Wriotes, and, last but not least, an adorable Albanian (see the attractive "jacket"), by name Yasmin Hanum, whom he meets in the Mosque of the Roses. She rightly says to Sanford " Wan, wah , the tales of Sultan Raschid are pale .beside thine." Through the mazes of the last worst under- world of international intrigue Sanford skilfully wins his way to the British Embassy, where he delivers his despatches and saves the Empire. On his return to England he finds that the beautiful Eve was innocent after all. It was all a mistake about her being in league with those dastardly Bolsheviks. So he fords her at sunset among the beeches. One stride, and she was close within his arms-- Michael," she whispered. . . . A galloping story, told with a great sense of the mot juste. But to compare it with Azyadt, as the publishers do in their " puff," convinces nobody and will pain the lovers of Loti.
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