Squadron Leader Loftus

In the short story The Gate of Baghdad, Squadron Leader Loftus is an R.A.F. doctor travelling from Damascus to Baghdad on the same bus as Parker Pyne. After a fellow passenger Captain Smethurst was found dead on the bus, he examined the body and declared that he had died from a blow to the head, perhaps when the bus bumped and he hit his head on the roof.

Parker Pyne thought this explanation "ridiculous" and later exposed Loftus as the fradulent financier Samuel Long in disguise. Long had bought off the real Loftus in Egypt for 20,000 pounds. In the radio dramatization of the story on BBC Radio 4, Loftus was introduced simply as doctor and his rank was not used. Loftus was bored of his work as an Air Force doctor and especially about being posted to Baghdad. He met Samuel Long on the train to Istanbul and accepted 500 pounds from Samuel Long i exchange for his uniform, passport and medical bag. Long said Loftus had disappeared somewhere in Africa. The bribery scene was dramatized.