 CHAPTER XXI. Ms. Jeffries makes a call. That morning Ms. Jeffries ate two eggs. She ate them successively, with increasing deliberation, and afterwards she lingered interminably over her toast and marmalade. Still Ryder made no appearance, and since the Arab waiter had informed her that he had not yet breakfasted, she concluded that he was not at the hotel, but had spent the night with some friend of his, probably that Andrew McLean, to whom he was always running off. Nor was he into luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, well, opportunities. She was not going to be in Cairo forever. Not much longer, in fact. There were adages about gathering rose-buds while ye may and making hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe. Other men did, reflected Ginny Jeffries, with a proud lift of her ruddy head, only somehow the other men, while Jack was provokingly attractive, only, of course, if he was going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions. Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New York and promised her society for a foursome at Bridge in the hotel lounge that evening. Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worthwhile. And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker the next day. He had ideas about excursions. It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was pleased to call her complete indifference. She recalled a vigor of Ryder's warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder. She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before she went away. Of course nothing could happen. He had done nothing to give himself away. He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings. But still it would have been better if he had gone. Those turban women had looked clearly at them when they were talking so long in the window. Perhaps it was not simply at the intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental. Perhaps their voices had been unguarded, or Jack's tones had awakened suspicion. Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with the bride. She remembered a French woman who had come to interrupt that talk, who had looked rather sharply at Jack, and that dreadful eunuch was always staring. She thought of a great many things now, more and more things, every minute. And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be the first to ridicule her alarm. He was probably enjoying himself, staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself. Still his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now, nor had he called at the hotel, and he certainly didn't have an extensive supply of clothes and linen upon him, beneath the mantle. Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black tennis shoes, which he had thought would go appropriately with a woman's robes, absurd to think of him as spending two days in tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and buy more when he had plenty of foot gear in his hotel room, unless he wore McLean's. She had always regarded the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary absorbent of Jack Rider's time and attention, and now that view was deeply reinforced. By noon she decided to do something. She would telephone that Andrew McLean and see if Jack had been there. The agricultural bank, that was the place. An obliging hotel clerk, clerks were always obliging to Miss Jeffries, gave her the number, and she slipped into the booth, feeling a ridiculous amount of excitement and suspense. She had never telephoned in Cairo, only been telephoned, too, and was not prepared for the fact that the telephone company was French. At the phone girls, numereux, car numereux s'y vous plaît, Jenny hastily choked back the English response and clutched violently at French numerals, huit cent, no, quatre vingt, en moment, she demanded desperately, and hanging up the receiver sat down to write out her number in French correctly. And then she got the bank, and still, clinging to her French, she requested to speak to M. McLean, and was informed that it was M. McLean himself. She is sweet. Oh, how absurd! Of course, you speak English, she exclaimed. This French telephone upset me. I wanted to speak to Mr. Ryder, if he is there, or else leave a message for him, if you know when he will come in. Ryder? There was a faint intonation of surprise in the voice. I have no idea really when he'll be in, said McLean, but you may leave the message, if you like. Hasn't he seen him for some time, stammered Jenny, feeling that McLean must be taking her for a pursuing adventurous? Well, not for some time, her heart sank. Not for two days? It might be that, said the scotchman cautiously. Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that harem, and McLean had not seen him. Of course, there might be other friends who had, and McLean might know of them. I'm afraid I'll have to see you, she said desperately. It's rather important about Jack Ryder, and if I could just talk with you a minute, this afternoon? I have no appointment for three-fifteen," McLean told her concisely. Evidently, he expected her to call at the bank. He was used to being called on. Shall I come? She began. I can see you at three-fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she repeated, three-fifteen, with an odd vibration in her voice. I wonder, she murmured. If I came at three-ten, or three-twenty? But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a quarter past the hour, when she left her cab before McLean's official-looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance. She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as Jack had said, scotch, single, and skeptical. That he was Jack's intimate friend and an official sort of banker. The word banker had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle-age. She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully cool reception room, and after a nervous hand-clasp waved her to a chair. He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it, she recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone, and that he must had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she must have made an odd impression. Well, he could see for himself now, he thought, a trifle defiantly. Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd, swift, gray eyes of his. He could see that she was, well, certainly a nice girl. As a matter of fact, McLean could see that she was considerably more, rather disconcertingly more. It was not often that such white-clad apparitions, pecan of face and coppery of hair, tease the eyes in his receiving-room. You wanted to see me? He offered mechanically. Once you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me, of Ginny Jeffries, began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social footing as soon as possible. McLean considered, and in honesty shook his head. He barely settled and mentioned young ladies. Oh! Ginny tried not to appear dashed. We are very old friends in America, and, of course, I've seen a good deal of him since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same hotel with us, with my aunt and uncle and myself. McLean smiled. He said it was a tooth, he mentioned dryly. In Ginny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were ingenious. Oh! of course he has been having a time with the dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until he has just disappeared since day before yesterday, and we, that is I, am very much concerned about it. Disappeared. You mean he... Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel. He hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from him. So I telephoned you, and then I found he hadn't been here. McLean looked off into space. Eh, well, he'll turn up, he said comfortingly. Jack's erratic, you may say, in his commons and goons. He means nothing by it. I've known him to do the same to me. Any time now, you're likely to hear. Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter, and her cheeks burned with brighter warmth. It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean. She took quietly distinct pains to explain. It's because I am anxious. Not a need. Not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about. He may have been called back to the diggins, you know. If I dug up some bitter porcelain there, or a few grains of corn, the boy would forget the sun was shining. Perhaps his collars burnished hair had shaped that thought. Jack knows his way about, he repeated encouragingly, as one who demolishes the absurd fears of women and children. You don't quite understand. Ginny's tones were silken smooth. You see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place where he had no business in the world to be. At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze, her humour overtook her wrath. Oh, it was quite all right for me, she replied mischievously to that look, only not for him. You see, he was masquerading. Again? thought McLean involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the lassies that lad was, and he had thought him such an aloof one. Masquerading as a woman, so he could take me to a reception. Ginny began to falter, just putting the escapade into words portrayed its less commendable features. It was a woman's reception, she began again, at a Turkish house, a marriage reception. She had certainly secured McLean's wholehearted attention. A marriage reception? A Turkish marriage reception? He said very sharply, and amazedly as his collar continued to pause. Do you mean to say that Jack Rider went into a Turkish house, thrust as a woman? There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young scotchman, which now took on a chiseled sternness. Swiffly, Ginny interposed. Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean. You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception, and I didn't have the courage to go alone, or drag some other tourist as inexperienced as myself. And so Jack, why, there didn't seem any harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish mantle and a veil up to his eyes, and he was sure he'd never be found out. I ought not to have let him, I know. It was my fault. She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's chivalry rose swiftly to her need. Indeed, you mustn't blame yourself, Miss Jeffries. You don't know Egypt, and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered there would have been no help for him, and no Christians asked afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The blame is just his now, he said decisively, yet not without a certain weak-need sympathy with the culprit. For if the girl had looked like this, he could see that she would be a difficult little piece to withstand, though any man with an ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible protector and not as a reckless schoolboy. What happened, he said quickly. Oh, nothing happened, nothing that I know of. We got along very well, I thought, although now I remember that some people did stare. But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just because I was an American, and he was apparently a Turkish woman. But there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to act as a guide, was there? And then Jack told me to go home first. He said it would be simpler that way, and that he would slip over to some friends or to some safe place and take his disguise off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was some black tennis shoes. So I left him, and he hasn't been back since. She added as McLean was silent. He told me that he had some engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the next day. Now just how long ago was this? Two days ago, the day before yesterday afternoon, she looked anxiously at McLean's face and took alarm at his careful absence of expression. Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think? He brushed that aside. And where was it this reception? At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city. I don't remember the street. We drove, and I had the cab wait. But it belonged to a Turkish general, Hamdi Bey, she brought out triumphantly. General Hamdi Bey. McLean did not correct her idea of the title. His expression was more carefully noncommittal than ever, while behind its quiet guard his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution. Hamdi Bey, a wedding reception, the daughter of Tufik Pasha. In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled words, that French girl again. Sir Ryder had not forgotten that affair, although he had kept silent about it of late. He had bided his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again, and he had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal, and deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice, while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own diabolical desire. Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in the young man's look upon her, and she was surprised, too, at his next question. I wonder now, if you were the young lady who took him to a masquerade bowl some time ago? Bitely she acknowledged it. You'll think I'm always taking him to things, she said brightly, but McLean's troubled gaze did not quicken with a smile. He was experiencing a vast compassion. She was so innocent, so unconscious of the quicksands about her. Probably she had never heard a breath of that first adventure. And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk's harem. McLean filled with cold antagonistic wonder. He forgot the lovely image of the French miniature, and remembering Tufik's rounded eyes and olive features, he thought of the veiled girl most illogically, for he knew that Tufik was not her father, as some bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. Sorrifully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior. He would help her to save him. She could do it yet, if only she did not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to make Jack go to a masquerade, that cursed masquerade, she could work other, more beneficent miracles. So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind undivided past. Do you say there was nothing to draw suspicion? He did not talk to anyone, the guests, or the bride. Oh yes, he did talk to the bride, said Miss Jeffries, with such utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the renegade. He talked quite a while to her, she said. Did you notice anything? Oh, I couldn't hear what he said. He was the last in line, and he stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She was very nice to him, said Ginny earnestly, producing every scrap of incident for McLean's judgment. She showed him some of her presence, something about her neck. In mid-speech, McLean changed a startled God to good. She wasn't suspicious then, he said weekly. Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing seemed to be wrong. But I did feel uneasy until I got away, and then Jack hasn't come back. Again she looked at the young scotchman for confirmation of her fear, and again she saw that careful, expressionless calm. It's no need for alarm, he told her slowly. Since nothing went wrong, I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that reception, if we only knew where he was going later. Yes, something might have happened later, Ginny took up. I thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more reckless. Oh, I am worried, she confessed, her gray eyes very round and childlike. And if anything had happened, she would always blame herself, thought McLean ironically, the unthinking devil-tree of the young scoundrel, when he found him he'd have a few things to say. That's why I came to you, Ginny went on. I hesitated, for he had warned me so against telling anyone, but no one else knows. And no one must know, McLean assured her crisply. I dare say, it's a madras nest, and Jack would be found safe and sound at his diggins, are often a lark with some friend or other. But it's well to make sure, and yet quite right in coming to me. Ginny thought she had done quite right too. There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle, his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side from her. She was not greatly misled by that untroubled look of his, and yet she was unconsciously reassured by it. And although he refused to be stampeded by alarm, he was not incredulous of it, for his manner was frankly grave. I'll send out it once," he said decisively, and see if I can pick up any gossip of that perception. I've a very clever clique with brothers in the bazaars, who's a perfect wireless for information. He has told me the night before a man was to be murdered. He paused reflecting that that was not a happy suggestion. Then I'll send out to Jack's diggins. That express doesn't stop to-night, but I'll find a way, and I'll let you know as soon as I can. You're very kind," said Ginny gratefully. His competent manner brought her a light-hearted sensation of difficulties already solved. Jack was as good as found she fell in swift reaction. If he was in any trouble this forceful young man would settle it. But probably he wasn't in any trouble. Probably he was just at his diggings, rushing off from her in the exasperating way he seemed to do whenever they were getting on particularly well. She remembered how he had bolted from that masquerade which had begun so happily. He had said he was ill, but she had never completely slain the suspicion that his illness sprang from ennui and disinclination. She rose. I mustn't take any more of your time, Mr. McLean, and you probably have a four-fifteen engagement. Eh? No, I have not. Seriously, he assured her. You are quite the last one I took on, the last before tea. He paused confused with a strange suggestion. Tea! His servant did it rather well, and it was time. Usually he had it in the garden. It was a charming garden, full of roses, with a nice view of the citadel, and his strange suggestion expanded with a rosy vision of Ginny among the roses, beside his wicker table, which he possibly cared to. He struggled with his idea and with his shyness. And then the sense that it wasn't quite decent, somehow, to be offering tea to this girl, whom anxiety for writer's unknown lot had brought to him overcame that unwanted impulse. He dismissed the idea, and like all shy men he was oddly relieved at the passing of the necessity for initiative, even while he felt his mild hopes expiring pang. He stepped before her to open the doors to which she was now taking herself. In the entrance he saw his clerk, the clever one, going out, and excusing himself he went forward to detain the man. For a moment there ensued a low-tone colloquy. Then the clerk, a dark brown, keen-featured fellow in European clothes, with a red fez, began to relate something. When Maclean turned back to Ginny Jeffery's, she saw that his look was sharply altered. There was a transfixed air about him, and when he spoke his voice told her that he had had a shock. My man tells me, he said, that Humpty Bay Sprite is dead. He buried her yesterday. From the Bazaars There was a moment's pause. What, that lovely girl? said Ginny in startled pity. She added incredulously, yesterday, and only the day before, why, what could have happened? That was what Maclean was asking himself very grimly. Allowed he told her slowly. They say that a fire happened, some accident, a condol overturned in her apartments, and of course the windows were screened. Fire, how terrible, that lovely girl, said Ginny again. She was genuinely horrified and pitiful, yet she found a moment to wonder at the evident depths of Maclean's consternation, for of course he had never seen the girl. Yet he looked utterly upset. It's one of the most dreadful things I ever heard of, Ginny murmured, on her wedding night, and she was so young, Mr. Maclean, and so exquisite. She didn't look like a real girl. She was a fairy creature. I never dreamed there really were rose leaf skins before, but hers was just like flower petals. Jack and I talked about it, I remember, and her face had something so bewitching about it, something so sweet and delicate. She broke off, revisited, with that vision of Amy's bright like beauty, how little that poor girl had thought as she stood there in the bright splendor of her robes and diadem, that in a few hours more. Oh, I hoped that fire, that it was merciful, but she didn't suffer, she said almost inaudibly. But speech itself was too definitive of horrors. It's tragic, she finished simply. It was tragic, with a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew Maclean. As he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his vision possessed by a flitting rush of pictures. He saw Jack talking with the girl at the reception. The girl showing him something about her neck, that a cursed locket he thought acutely. Jack sending Miss Jeffery's home. Had he arranged that purposely? Was there some mad improvised scheme of escape in the air? The pictures became more flitting race of conjecture, yet touched with horrifying possibility. Jack lingering, hiding. Jack making love to the girl, attempting flight. Jack discovered, and the quick saber thrust for both. A fire, very likely, to scream the darker tragedy, Hamdi was capable of it to save his pride, and it would dispose so easily of the evidence. Maclean's thought flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire might be the simple truth, that writers talk with the girl might actually have ended in farewell, at least a temporary farewell, and that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp. That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that way, Maclean's scotch sense of providence was capable of pointing out the stern benefits of the sad visitation. Whatever Miss Jeff might have been afoot between his friend and that unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented, and however hard Jack might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for him than her life. No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure, no more desire and danger, no more lurking about barred gates and secret doors and forbidden palaces, no more clandestine trists, no more fury of mind beating against the bars of fate. Jack was saved. Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl, what then? Maclean was skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then, his eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the unconscious answer to that future. She would save writer from regret and retrospection. And after years, looking back from a happy and well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty. Jack must never tell this girl the story. Maclean had read somewhere of the mistakes of two open revelations to women, and now he was very sure of it. She must never receive this hurt, never know that when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance, he had been agonizing over another girl, that the escapade she thought so intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other, that the young creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her rival drawing Jack from her. Maclean would speak clearly to writer about this and seal his lips, but first he would have to be found. He became conscious that he had been a long time silent following these thoughts while geni-weighted. I'll do everything I can to find out about that fire, he told her. I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace, he quickly amended, as her face was touched with instant question, and I'll see if anyone in Cairo knows where he is. Then if nothing turns up, I'll just pop out to his diggins in the mornin' and make sure he's all right. I'll get back that night and telephone you, and until then, not a word about it, much better not. Not a word, geni promised, and if you should happen to find out anything to-night, I'll let you know at once. Well, rather. But don't count on that. The old boy's out in his tombs dustin' off his mummies. You make it a letter yourself in the mornin'. He threw out with hurt'ning inspiration, and while you're readin' it, I'll be tearin' along to the infernal desert. He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips. Bright and reassured, and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, she took her leave. But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McClain's visage. Twenty-four hours, two nights in a day, and the girl was dead and in her grave, Muslims wasted no time before interment, and Jack was where? CHAPTER XXIII. IN THE DESERT. Clinging to that plunging horse, Ryder made little attempt at first to guide the flight. It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and Amy in his arms, while every galloping moment flung a farther distance between them and that palace of horror. His heart was beating in a wild triumphant exultation, glorious to be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world ahead. He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him. And Amy was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of that sinister man and the expectation of dread things. The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion. They were headed south, and to Ryder's exhilaration this seemed good. Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl. Even the harbor that McClain could give would not be proof against the legal forces of the Turks. Law and order, power and police were all in the hands of the husband or father. Even now the alarm might be given, the telephones ringing. Amy must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France, or until the French authorities could get out their protective documents. The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and desperate expedient. The American hospital at Syute, the isolation ward, the pretense of contagious illness, and then later travel north in the care of nurses. All this if he could win over one of the doctors. At that moment winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder's mind. The only difficulty he recognized was getting Amy into that hospital. But they would not be looking for him in the south. He could manage it, he felt jubilantly. He could smuggle her into his diggings at night, and then make his arrangements. Anything, everything was possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them. South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arabs rhythmic footfalls ringing through the still gray world of before dawn. Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse, while Amy clung to the saddle. Then south again, along the river road. The sky was light now, and the river was light. Only the palms and the villages and the flat, duke fields were dark. And in the east, behind the Makadam Hills, a thin band of gold began to brighten. Life was stirring. Small black boys on huge black buffaloes splashed in the river, veiled girls with water jars on their high-held heads, from which the shoals trailed down to the dust, filed past from the villages, like a Parthenon frieze. On the high banks, the Naked Fahalene were already stooping to the incessant dipping of the Shadouf. While from the fields came the plaintive creaking of the well-sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal round. A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to themselves, bobbed by, like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black robe barefooted child, carrying a live turkey in her arms, while before her rode her father, in shining Ponzi roads on a white donkey, strung with beads of blue. And by these travelers there passed, in that brightening dawn, two other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black horse, a man in a military cloak, and a green and gold turban about his bronze head, and behind him, on a pylion, a black mantled black veiled girl, with bare dangling feet. It was Amy who had evolved the disguise. Constructing the turban from the negligee beneath her mantel, and it was Amy who bargained with the villagers for their breakfast, eggs and goat's milk and bread and rice, while her lord, as befitted his dignity, stayed aloof upon his steed, returning a courteous response of, Allah salamak. God bless you to their greetings. Then as the day brightened, and the last soft veil of mist was burned away before a blood-red sun, that pair of travelers left the high road, and turned west upon a byway, that led past fields of corn and yellow water, and mud villages, where goats and naked babies and ragged women, squatted idly in the dust, and on through low, red granite hills, swirled about with yellow sanddrift, and out into the desert beyond. Here fresh vigor came to the Arapours, and tossing his mane and stretching at his nostrils to the dry air, he broke into a gallop that sent sand and pebbles flying from his hoofs. To right and left the startle desert hairs scattered, and from the clumps of spiky helga the black vultures rose in heavy winged flight. Then the breeze dropped, and the swift coming heat rushed at them, like a furnace breath, and slower and slower they made their way, rider leading the jaded horse, and Amy nodding in the saddle, mere crawling specks across the immensity of sand. Then in the shade of a huge clump of gray-green mittenen beside a jutting boulder, they stopped at last to rest. The horse sank on his knees, rider spread out his cloak, and Amy dropped down upon its folds, lost in exhausted sleep, as soon as her head touched the sands. Rider his back against the rock kept watch. It was not the exultant rider of that first hour of flight. The excitement of the night had subsided and withdrawn its wild stimulation. It was a hot and tired and immensely sobered young man, who sat there with eyes that burned from lack of sleep, and a brow knit into a taut and anxious line. Realization flooded him with the sun. Responsibility burned in upon him with the heat. Alone in the Libyan desert he sat there, and at his feet there slept the young girl whose life he had snapped utterly off from its roots. He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him, if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious, vaguely unhappy, and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Muslim. And now she lay there like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of hair clinging to her moist, sun-fleshed cheeks, her long lashes mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless, but for that anxious-eyed young man. Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert. And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely luxury. Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat, a lump of queer, choking tenderness. He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her. He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once protective and possessive, and denying of all self. He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that he had saved her, if only he could keep her safe. He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in France in whose name he had urged his interference, that unknown Delcasse and, who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs, would she welcome and endow this lovely girl? He could not doubt it. Amy's youth and beauty would be treasure trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Amy would be a belle, an heiress. He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes. And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, the torn chiffons of her negligee fluttering over her slim bare feet. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of the 40th Door This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The 40th Door by Mary Hastings Bradley Chapter 24 The Tomb of a King There were several approaches to the American excavations. McClain, on that morning after his visit from Janie Jeffries, chose to borrow a friend's motor and man, and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which the gullies ran west through the Red Hills into the desert. It was a still, hot day without a cloud or wind, and the sun had an air of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther hills and veiled the desert reaches. It was not conducive to comfort, and Andrew McClain was not comfortable. He was hot and sticky and sandy and abominably harassed. Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder and Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bays. He had not been seen at the museum nor the banks nor at cooks, nor the usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends. And the clever clerk, with the two brothers in the bazaar, had on earth quite a bit of disquieting news about that reception. Disquieting, that is, to one with secret fears. There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bay, and the bride had been killed instantly. That much was known to all the world. The general had been distracted. He had sat brooding beside his bride's coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within. He had been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating his slaves. Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high order. One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old crone whose sister's child was employed in the general's kitchen, and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the root. The bride's youth and beauty, her jewels, her robes, the general's infatuation, and the general's grief. The reports of these ran through the city like wildfire, and from the particular channel of the kitchen maid and the old aunt and the brother in the bazaars came news of the very especial means that Allah had taken to preserve the general from destruction. For he had been in the bride's apartments just before the fire. But the power of Allah, the all-seeing, had sent a thief, a prowler, by night upon the palace roofs, and the screams of a girl in the upper story had called the general to that direction. And so his preservation had been accomplished. It was that rumor of the thief upon the roofs that sent the chill of apprehension down Maclean's spine, for though the bazaars knew nothing of the thief's identity, and it was reported he had escaped by the river, yet Maclean felt the sinister finger of suspicion. If the thief had not been a thief, unless of brides, and if he had not escaped? Impatiently the young scotchman clapped his heels against the donkey's sides, enhancing the efforts of the runner with the gesticulating stick. Suppose now that he should not find Jack at the excavations. It was encouraging somehow to hear the monotonous rise and fall of the labor song Proceeding as Usual, although Maclean immediately told himself that the work would naturally be going on under Thatcher's direction, whether Ryder were there or not. The camp knew nothing of Cairo. The camp would be as usual. And yet, after his first moment survey, he had an indefinite but uneasy idea that the camp was not as usual. True, the tattered demelion freeze of basket-bearers still wove its rhythmic way over the mounds to the siftings, where Thatcher was presiding as was his want. But in the native part of the encampment there appeared a sly stir and excitement. The unoccupied of all ages and sexes that usually were squatting interminably about some fire or sleeping like mummies in hermetically-wrapped black mantles now were gathered in little whispering knots whose backward glances portrayed a sense of uneasiness. And as Maclean rode past a young Arab who had been the center of attention drew back with such carefulness to escape observation that Maclean's shrewd eyes marked him closely. It might be that his nerves were deceiving him, but there did seem to be something surreptitious in the air. Over his shoulder he glimpsed the young Arab hurrying out of the camp. It might be anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be going shopping to the village and the others giving him their commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers on were thick as flies. He dismounted and hurried forward to meet Thatcher's advance. The men had rarely met and Thatcher's air of hesitation and absent-mindedness made Maclean proffer his name promptly with a sense of speeding through the preliminaries. Then with a manner he strove to make casual he put his question. I say, is that right her back? He knew in the moment's pause how tight suspense was gripping him. Then Thatcher glanced toward the black yawning mouth of a tomb entrance. Why, yes, he's down there," he added. Been a bit sick, complains of the sun. For a moment his relief was so great that Maclean did not believe in it. Jack here? Jack absolutely safe? Mechanically he put, when did he come in? When? Thatcher hesitated trying to recall. Oh, night before last, rodent after dark, he added reassuringly, as the others swung about towards the tomb. He says there's nothing really wrong with him. There's no temperature. Maclean nodded. His relief now was acutely compounded with disgust. He felt no lightning leap of thanksgiving that his friend was safe, but rather that flash of irritated reaction which makes the primitive parent smack a recovered child. Not a thing in the world the matter. A mare's nest just as he had prophesized to Miss Jeffries. Why in heaven's name hadn't Jack the decency to send that over-anxious young lady a card when he abandoned town so suddenly? Not that Maclean blamed Miss Jeffries. Given the masquerade and Jack's disappearance and a zealous feminine interest, her concern was perfectly natural. But Maclean had left a busy office and taken an anxious and uncomfortable excursion, and his voice had no genial ring as he shouted his friend's name down the dark entrance of the tomb-shaft. In a moment he heard a voice shouting hollowly back, then a wavering spot of light appeared upon the inclined floor and writer's figure emerged like an apparition from the gloom. I say that you, Andy? Evidently he had been snatched from sleep. His dark hair was rumpled, his face flushed, and he yawned with complete frankness. Maclean knew a sudden yearning to put an arm about him. Dear old Jack, dear irresponsible scamp, his reaction of the irritation vanished. It was so darn good to see the old chap again. He muttered something about being in the vicinity while writer, rousing to host ship, called directions to the cook-boy to bring a tray of luncheon. It's cool down here, he told Maclean, leading the way back. It was cool indeed in the hall of offerings. It was also, Maclean thought, satisfying a recovered appetite, a trifle depressing. They sat in a small island of light in an ocean of gloom, while about them shadowy columns towered to indistinguishable heights, and half-seeing carvings projected their strange suggestions. It seemed incongruous to be smoking cigarettes so unconsortedly at the feet of the ancient gods. But Maclean's feeling of depression might have been due to his renewed awareness of catastrophe. For though Jack was here, safe and sound enough, although a bit unlike himself in manner, yet Jack had been at that confounded reception in a woman's rig, and Jack had seen the girl and talked with her, apparently on terms of understanding. And if Jack had left Cairo that night, as he said he did, claiming delay on the way due to a tired horse, then Jack knew nothing in the world of the palace fire, and the girl's sudden and tragic death. And Maclean would have to tell him. He would have to tell him that the girl he was probably dreaming of in some fool's paradise of memory and hope was now only a little mound of dust in an oriental cemetery, that a shaft of temporary wood already marked the grave of Amy Marie Dijon, daughter of Tupac Pasha and wife of Hamdi Bey. And however much Maclean's sound senses might disapprove of the whole fantastic affair, and his sober judgment commend the workings of Providence, he loved his friend, and he feared that his friend loved this lost girl. He had to end love and hope and romance, and implant a desperate grief. He thought very steadily of Ginny Jeffries. He cleared his throat. Jack Gullman! He started to tell him that there had been a fire in Cairo, a most shocking fire in a harem lick. It seemed to him that Jack was not listening, that he had a far away yet intent look upon his face as if one attending to other things. And then suddenly Jack seemed to gather resolution and turn to his friend with an air of narration of his own. Look here, Maclean, there's something I want to tell you. Wait a minute now, said Maclean quietly. I want you to hear this. It was a fire in the palace of your friend, Hamdi Bey. He had Jack's attention now. He was fairly conscious of her rested breath. Not looking about him, he went grimly on. The night of the wedding, a fire started in the harem lick. It was a bad business. A very bad business, Jack, for the girl. The girl, Hamdi, had just mellied. He was conscious of Jack's look upon him, but he did not turn to meet it. She died, he said heavily. He buried her yesterday. He thought that Jack was never going to speak. Then, Died, said Ryder in an odd voice. I expect she breathed in a bit of smoke, said Maclean, trying for a merciful suggestion. And he buried her? Jack was like a child, trying to fit bewildering facts together. Maclean's sympathy hurt him like a physical pain. He wondered what it could be like to realize that some loved one you had just talked with in radiant life was now gone utterly. And then he heard Jack laugh. Mad, he thought quickly, turning now to look at him. Ryder's head was tilted back. Ryder's shoulders were shaking. Oh, my aunt, he gasped hysterically. My Aunt Clarissa, is that what Hamdi says? He sobered instantly and leaned towards Maclean. That looks as if he's done with her, what? Saving his face that way? You're sure it was Amy, the girl he had just married, not some other girl, some co-wife or something? And as Maclean bewilderly muttered that he was sure, Ryder began to laugh again, to laugh jubilantly, joyously, triumphantly. He's given her up. He's got a saving explanation to thrust in the world's face. Oh, blessed Allah, valer of all that should be veiled. The man's through. He's had enough. He isn't going to try to. Across the bright oblong of the entrance a shadow appeared. Ryder, I say Ryder, said a hurried voice, Thatcher's voice, and Thatcher came hastily forward in perturbed urgency. There's a lot of men outside, police and natives and whatnot, with warrants. They're searching the place, and they want to see you. Hang it all, Ryder, said Thatcher explosively but apologetically. They say you've made off with some chic's daughter. He paused, shocked at the monstrosity of the accusation. He was a delicate-minded man, outside of his knowledge of antiquities, and he evidently expected his young associate to fall upon him and slay him for the slander. A chic's daughter, said Ryder in a mildly wondering voice, from his emphasis one might have inferred he was saying, How odd! I don't remember any chic's daughter. A queer, uncomfortable flush spread fanways from Thatcher's thin temples and raid across his high cheekbones. He did not look at either of the men as he murmured. It's most peculiar, but that Arab horse, the chic claims the horse is his, too. He says you rode off on it with his daughter. That's all right, said Ryder absently. I don't want the horse. But you say the chic's there. What does he look like? Thin with blonde mustaches? Oh, no, no, no, not at all. He's quite heavy and bearded, one-eyed, if I recollect. But there is a man with a blonde mustache who appears to do the directing. And you mean they are searching? said Ryder abruptly. You've let them in? They have warrants, Thatcher protested, and there are proper policemen conducting the search. My good God, where are they now? Not coming here. I won't have any policemen trampling here and meddling with my fines. Tell them to clear out, Thatcher. You know there's no chic's daughter here. Ryder gave a quick laugh, but the impression of his laugh was not as sharp as the impression of his alarm. I did tell them it was preposterous, Thatcher began, but you see, after finding the horse. Oh, the horse! I got him for a song. Of course the beggar is stolen. Give him back if they claim him. But as for any chic's daughter, keep the crowd out, Thatcher. I won't have them here. Not in these tombs. I tell you they are policemen. They are armed. You can't resist. How many are there? A lot? But they'll take your word, won't they? Look here, McLean. Can't you settle this for me and keep them out? The natives have been talking, murmured Thatcher, reddening still deeper. And they have said enough about your riding in at night and keeping to this tomb all day to make the men very suspicious. They are watching this one now. And keep them back as long as you can. For God's sake, entreated rider, with that strange, passionate violence. Andy, you do something. Hold them back. Give me time. I've got to get some things together. I won't have them at my things. Hold them back out here till I come. He was gone, gone tearing back into the gloom and silence of his tomb. And McLean and Thatcher, astounded witnesses of his outburst, turned speedily to the entrance, avoiding each other's eyes. Agitatedly, Thatcher was murmuring that rider's finds were valuable, immensely valuable, and it was disturbing to contemplate any invasion. And with equal agitation but more mechanical calm, McLean was murmuring back that he understood, he quite understood. As for understanding, he was stunned and dazed, a sheik's daughter, and the father himself claiming her under the direction of a blonde mustache man, and a stolen horse, Jack conceding the horse, Jack utterly upset at the search-party. But he himself had seen that new place shafted with its inscription to Amy-Meghie de Gennes. What then in the name of wonders did this mean? There couldn't be another girl. McLean's imagination faltered, then dashed on at a gallop. Some handmaiden, perhaps, whom Jack had rescued in mistaken chivalry? Perhaps the French girl has sent a maid on a head? McLean's head was whirling now. One thing appeared quite as possible as another. Pasha's daughters and sheik's daughters, stolen horses, and de Gennes and effrets, and palaces and masquerades at wedding receptions, appeared upon the same plain of feasibility. Outwardly he was extremely calm, calm and cold and crisp. At the mouth of the tomb he detained the party of native policemen with their hangers on of curious natives, and examined, with great show of circumspection and authority, the perfectly regular search warrants which had been issued for them at the instigation of an apparently bereft parent. He conversed with the alleged parent, a stolid, taciturn native dignitary whose accusations were confirmed by eagerly assenting followers. He lived in a small village not far north of the camp. He had a young daughter, very beautiful. Three nights ago he had surprised her with this young American, and they had fled upon his noblest horse. It was a simple and direct story, and Jack, by his own report, had been out upon the desert that night, had appeared upon the next night with this unknown and beautiful horse, and had since kept to the tomb claiming illness in a most persistent way. The camp boys had testified that he had been vividly critical of the food sent into him, and that he had required extraordinary amounts of heated water, all of which, McLean said sternly in the vernacular, amounts to nothing, unless you can discover the girl. And that, Monsieur, said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan's guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, that is exactly what we are here to do. McLean found himself looking into a thin menacing face, capped with a red fez, a face deeply lined marked by light, arrogant eyes, and embellished with a huge blonde mustache. And your interest in this, Monsieur? He questioned. I am a friend of Sheikh Hassan's, said the Turk loftily. I shall see that my friend obtains his rights. And in McLean's other ear, a distraught thatcher was murmuring. That officer chap is Hamdi Bey, a general of the guards. You know, Mr. McLean, this really is, you know, it is Hamdi Bey. Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, befriending this sheik, and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace. Mystifying. Mystifying and disquieting. Yes. Disquieting in face of Jack's alarm. But for that alarm, McLean could have believed the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself upon Ryder, supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his masquerade, or else as the prowler by night. But Jack's furious anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back ostensibly to preserve his things. Was it actually possible that he had that sheik's daughter concealed in some nook or cranny of the place? McLean told himself that it was preposterous. It was preposterous. But Ryder had been doing preposterous things. And glancing at Thatcher, he perceived that that perturbed and transparent gentleman was also telling himself that his suspicions were preposterous. The search party, Tiring of Parley, was moving about the hall in business-like inspection. And then Ryder appeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and absolute denial. But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with an ironic and overdone politeness. Ah! Mishirla General! We meet as we parted in the depths. The General appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip and felt the currents of animosity. So those two had met. Ryder had been discovered then. McLean tried in feudal bewilderment to recall just what amazing thing Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared. He kept very close at that young man's side as the strange party moved on into the inner chamber. The searchers were scrupulously careful of the excavator's finds. They did not finger a freeze or disturb a single small box of the tenderly-packed potteries and beads and miniature boats. But they scraped every heap of dust to see if it concealed an entrance. They exhausted the resources of each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of Jack's blankets, and required the opening of the large chest in which the wax reproductions of the freezes were placed awaiting transportation. You will perceive, Mishir's, declared Ryder in mocking irony, that no human being is within this last fold of wax, especially a being, he added thoughtfully, with a glance at the stolid cheek of the proportions of her papa. This daughter, was she a large young lady? He inquired politely of the Arab. The cheek felt safe no reply, but from across his ample person the general leaned forward. She was small, Mishir's Ryder, he said in silken tones, but she can raise a man as high as the gallows, or as low as the grave. A marvel, returned young Ryder smoothly, and was she also of charm, a charm that could kindle fires? It appeared to McClain that he caught the flaunting implications of the taunt. He wished to heaven that Ryder would hold his reckless tongue. Ryder was now turning to the official in charge of the police. If you have satisfied yourselves that this place is empty. The man, a rather apologetic, pleasant fellow, shrugged and smiled. We have examined all. There was a moment in which the searchers regarded one another through the gloom in the inquiring embarrassment of the discountenanced and considered departure, but Hamdi Bey had more insistent eyes. He was circling the place again like a wolf for the moment, flashing his searchlight over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing-boat upon the Nile, now the judgment-hall of Mott. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a limestone slab. These stones, these have been merely piled here, he cried excitedly. This is a hole, an entrance. Dig them out, men. There is a door here, I tell you. Hastily Ryder addressed the police. It is simply the burial vault. He told them. The sarcophagi are there, ready for transportation. Mr. Thatcher will tell you. I assure you it is merely the actual tomb, said Thatcher nervously. I have myself assisted my colleague with the preparation. The slabs had been displaced now, disclosing the small door, with its fine wrought steel. Hamdi flashed a look of triumph upon the man who had obviously tried to conceal that door from them, a look which Ryder ignored as he turned to McLean. That is the door which is sealed forever upon the dead and upon the Ka, the spiritual double, he said in a low conversational tone. It has some remarkable representations of the Jackal Anubis. It seemed to McLean a most extraordinary time for a disquisition upon Anubis. If Ryder was attempting to proof himself at his ease, he had certainly misjudged his manner. They am Anubis. McLean gave back under his breath, he is not the only Jackal. What the devil's the meaning of this? Ryder made no reply. The stone had been pushed back and the searchers were stooping beneath the narrow entrance. Then, as McLean's head bent at the door, he heard his friend whispering, I say, you haven't a gun you could slip me. Mutely he shook his head, and that agitated whisper died away with the last vestions of belief in Ryder's innocence. Apprehensively, McLean glanced about that inner chamber he was entering, dreading to encounter instant and damning evidence of a girl. He found himself in the presence of the dead. The chamber was a small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty, and the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain-waiting for centuries. It was hot, whereas the other chambers had been cool, or else McLean's disturbed blood was pumping too furiously through his pulses. Instinctively he drew close to Jack as the party stood flashing their lights over the bare walls and empty corners, and then concentrated the pale illumination upon those caskets of the dead. I told you that the place was empty, Ryder said, with distinct impatience in his voice. And now, if you have satisfied yourselves, you are in haste, monsieur, said Hamdi Bey's smooth voice. If you will permit us to see what is within. He approached the first sarcophagus. The sheik, who appeared to have committed the restoration of his daughter into the other's hands, remained imperturbably beside the entrance, while the head of the police came forward to assist Hamdi in raising the painted lid. I protest, said Ryder very sharply. He stood upon the other side of the case, eyeing them compatively. It is useless to disturb this lid. I tell you that the Persians have been considerably before you. And indeed, the case was empty. Hamdi moved to the next, and again Ryder took up his post opposite. Again, I protest, he insisted. The least jar or injury. But the men raised the lid, and after the briefest look moved on. And now Ryder spoke very clearly and authoritatively, addressing the head of the police. I must ask you to stop. Even the dust that you are disturbing is precious. This thing has gone beyond all reason. The police official looked as if he agreed with him, but Hamdi Bey had moved determinately to the third sarcophagus. The official hesitated, evidenced discomfort, but moved finally after the bay. If there is nothing here, he murmured, surely you cannot object. There is precious dust here, Ryder repeated. You must understand. We see for ourselves, said Hamdi Bey, and now his voice had a ring of triumphant steel through its soft smoothness, stunned aside, this is in the name of the law. It seemed to McLean that for one mad moment Ryder was tempted to resist. In the flickering light of the torches he stood defiantly above the painted mummy case, his eyes steadily upon the bay, his hands pressing down upon the vivid bloom of the dead woman's pictured face. Then, with a beaten but ironic smile, he stood aside. Slowly the men lifted the lid. In that moment McLean became aware that his heart was pumping thickly somewhere in his throat and that the rest of him was a hollow, horrible void of suspense. Hamdi Bey turned his arrogant stare from young Ryder and looked down. Drawing closer, fearfully, McLean's eyes followed him. He could not believe their evidence. His heart could not stop its idiotic pumping. But there he saw no terror-stricken girl, no pallid runaway of the harems, but a still, dark-shrouted form, swathed in the tight bandages of the ancient embalmer, a dry, dusty little mummy creature, blankly and inscrutably confronting this unforeseen resurrection. Over their dumbfounded heads he heard young Ryder's mocking laugh. End of CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV OF THE FOURTYTH DOOR This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE FOURTYTH DOOR By Mary Hastings Bradley CHAPTER XXV IN CHIRO IT'S GOOD NEWS said Miss Jeffries with bright positives. It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had been an important dinner with an important bank official passing through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last looking extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes. And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams. A safe, absolutely safe, McLean confirmed. He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was a rested judgment. Safe? Where? At his come. I just returned, just in time to dine. I bailed for doubt this morning. Oh! It took your whole day. I am so sorry! For a moment the girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean. You must simply hate me, she told him repentantly, dropping into one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been guarding. Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details. Uncle and Aunt are in the lounge, and I should like you to meet them. But they'll be there for ever, and I do want to hear first. Was it fearfully hot? Oh! Rather, remembered the young man, confused by this change of interest. I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for deserts? I got up a good breeze going. But I was a bit wrought up, you know. Not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day. And he's out at his camp, said Ginny thoughtfully. How-how long had he been there? He says he started that night, said McLean, noncommittally. Oh! That night! That was rather sudden, wasn't it? Jack suddenly, you know, mentioned his friend uncomfortably, and he had a lot of fines to pack up for transport. They had taken their stuff to the museum, and Jack had been away so long here in the city. No wonder I didn't hear then, said the girl, with a laugh in which it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret clamour of chagrin and humiliation. Of course she had wanted Jack to be safe, but he might have been ill or away on some official summons, just back at his diggings, gone off on an impulse with no thought to let her know. And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious concern, which he had probably taken for a tender interest. Heaven knows what disillusionising thing Jack had said to him that day. Men were too hateful. And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so worried about was quite well and busy, thank you. Only he had overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word. In Ginny's ears was the rush of the fury's wings. But on Ginny's lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining shield for the wounds of the spirit. That is a comfort, she said with a pleasant, friendly warmth. You don't know how hardly responsible I felt. Really, Jack ought to have let me know. But that's Jack all over. He's never grown up. He's not had much time, returned McLean from the height of his twenty- nine years. He never will, said Ginny's agely, not until, well, not until he meets some girl you know who will make him feel really responsible. It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting so assiduously of late, had certainly not added to his claims of responsibility. Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields on Mount Blanc where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of affairs. I have spent more time, Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered young man, introducing Jack to nice girls. But it never takes. Not seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care anything really about girls, and he does need somebody to get him out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings. But of course you think I'm a sentimental thing. McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatingly engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable platonic basis of her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and brightened, and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its astonishment. He marveled at his friend, to turn to something fantastic, something bizarre, for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem, when he had this Miss Jeffries for a friend. But probably the young lady herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as brothers, and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm, honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness. The worst for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to mend his troubled future. It was not only Rider's troubled future that troubled McLean, it was also Rider's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb, he had not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been no moment for revelation. Thatcher had hung about them, and Hamdi Bey of all men had requested a place in McLean's motor for the return to Cairo, and that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none. Get the old devil out of here, had been Jack's furious appeal, referring to Hamdi. Deny everything to him, only get him out. And McLean got him out. The sheik and his followers, after a murmurous conference with the Bey, had galloped off. The police had turned towards their post, and Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting motor. Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean, and McLean was not sorry for the opportunity to exchange implications. The Bey had unfolded his sympathetic friendship for the sheik. McLean had unfolded a cold surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a prominent archaeologist. The Bey had produced the evidence, and McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift it for the benefit of all concerned. Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a rumour against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder to take the matter up. And there he perceived that even the suave and political Hamdi squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige and political power and all sorts of unknown influence. And native testimony, while valuable and unscrupulous, had a way of offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning investigators of the law. And with no real evidence against Ryder, the matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be dropped, unless the girl, whatever girl they sought, could be discovered. If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American, he would choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the Bey's capacity for assassination, or poisoning, while he bade him farewell before the dark wall of his palace entrance. Between them had passed no reference to the Bey's recent loss. Since it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the Bey's wife, he judged equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes. The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide upon any credible explanation. It would have to wait until he saw Ryder in the next day or two, for Ryder had told him he would try to get in with his finds as soon as possible. But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind, he had found himself asking, through the courses of that important dinner, and now in the pauses of his conversation with Ms. Jeffries, was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense anxiety of Jacks? Had Jack led them on for his own young amusement? But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with Jenny Jeffries for a vis-a-vis. A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how busy McLean must be, and McLean found himself somehow embarked in sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Ms. Jeffries seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work throughout the country. And as he talked, he found himself noticing things that he had never noticed before about girls. The wave of bright hair against the flush cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet. And you live all alone in that big house? Jenny was murmuring. Not exactly alone, McLean smiled, there's Mohammed and Hasan and Abdullah and Aliva and Sayyard El-Tawahi. What do you call him when you're in a hurry, laughed the girl. It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint and secret embarrassment, and he had discovered this delightful interest and bright vivacity. And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever stilled and chilled in Ms. Jeffries breast, like a poor hidden corpse beneath bright roses. Why, at two and twenty, expectancies flourish so gaily that one lone bud is not long missed. And Shagrin is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all the more delicate for a dimming cloud. Moreover, McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. When in startled realization of time and place, he rose at last, and she murmured laughing. And after all, you never met aunt and uncle. He felt a queer blush tingle his cheekbones, and a daring impulse shaped the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. We're here five days more, said Jani the Explicit. Thoughtfully he repeated five days, and said farewell. Now, if he decorously waits to the next to the last day, murmured Jani to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the balance. He didn't, but it was not the initiative of the Scots race which brought him to her late that very next afternoon, but a soiled looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. He found her at tea upon the verandah with her aunt and uncle, and while he made conversation with the Pendletons, he gave Miss Jeffery's the note. From our friend Ryder, he said, was forced lightness. It explains itself. But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds, and sending this ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo Museum to meet him at five, and would he please stop on the way, and call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffery's, and borrow a woman's cloak and hat and veil, or, if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. What is it another masquerade? said Jani blankly. McLean looked mutely at her, and shook his head. But within him horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jani went for the things. She returned with a small bag containing coat and hat and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with him. If the things aren't right, I'll know what he wants, she declared, and then smiling. But do you suppose he is up to now? McLean felt that he didn't want to know, and most positively he didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't thought up some brilliant excuse. He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured their adieu, and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning in the gates, and before the steps of a back entrance other camels, kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even the camel's most exhausted moments opposed commands, were being relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute in exact direction of Thatcher. And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a thin bronze face, flushed with impatience, was imperiously conveying the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi. Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals. I asked for motors, and they furnished these, he cried disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. It took us all day though we have killed the brutes. Hello, Ginny, did you bring the things? With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. Come in, both of you, he called, plunging after his men. At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jefferies until the men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they came mechanically up. McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well-rehearsed scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance, but his role of dumb subservience was clearly defined. You understand, Ryder was calling to the men, nothing more goes in this room, all else downstairs. Come in, he said hurriedly to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them. Of course, this doesn't lock, he muttered. Ginny, you stand here, do, and if anyone tries to come in tell them they can't. Tell them you say they can't? questioned Ginny a little helplessly? No, no, not that. Tell them that you are using the room. Tell them," said Ryder with a very brisk and serious inspiration. Tell them your petticoat is coming off. Why, Jack Ryder," said Ginny indignantly. Nonsense, he said to her indignation. Don't you remember when your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens. But it doesn't run in families. Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath the lid. Here, Andy," he said quickly, I had it wedged so it wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty. He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McClain saw the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking. Gently now, he murmured, and the lid was lifted and laid aside. The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene, the same dry, dusty little mummy. But with hands strangely reckless for an archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time, Ryder tore at those bandages. He unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's flash, to McClain's tense, expected nerves it was like a scene at the pantomime. He had divined it, he had foreseen, and yet there was the shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the supernatural and the revelation. In the wave of the enchanter's wand the mummy was gone, and in its place lay a sleeping beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness to the head, the long dark lashes sweeping the still cheeks. CHAPTER 26 THE PAINTED CASE She's fainted, said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket he drew swiftly a thermos bottle, but before the top was off those long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft dark eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance. Not faint, said the girl in a breath of a voice, but it was so long, so hot. Drink this! Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled top of the thermos. It's over, all over, he murmured as she drank. You're safe now, safe. You're at the museum. Then we'll get you to a hotel. CHAPTER 27 The girl echoed with a faint implication of humor in that silver bell of a voice. She put her hands to her hair and to her face, in which the hues of life mingled with the pallor of exhaustion. On her small fingers sparkled the gleam of diamonds, and from her slender arms fell back the gold and jade tissues of her chiffon robe. To Maclean she had increasingly the appearance of a creature of enchantments, and to see that young loveliness in its strange gleam of color lying against his friend's supporting tan linen arm. Sardonically his eyes sort Ryder. So that was your mummy. There was nothing else to do. Ryder had withdrawn his arm. The two men faced each other across the girl. I was in a blue funk, you see. I was hiding her in the inner chamber until I could smuggle her away. And when those wolves came on the scent, and not an instant to lose, I got the bandages off the real mummy and about a me. Lord, it was a close call. He drew in a long breath. I hadn't a gun, I hadn't a thing, and I had to grin and play it through, and I was deathly afraid of Thatcher. Thatcher? Yes, Thatcher. You see, I'd pop the mummy into a case without its bandages, and if Thatcher had glimpsed that he'd have said something. Oh, innocently, that would have given the show away. He knew there was only one mummy, and it was wrapped. But the Lord was with me. The men opened the empty case first, and at the second they said nothing to show it wasn't empty, and Thatcher didn't look in. Then they went on to the third. And me, when I heard those voices, I stopped breathing, said the girl. But I shook so. I thought they would think that mummy was coming to life. And the dust. Oh, it was almost beyond my force not to sneeze. You'd have sneezed us to kingdom come, said Ryder gaily now. But I did not, she protested. I lay there and thought of Hamdi looking down upon me and my flesh crept. Oh, it was terrible. And yet it was funny. Funny. McClain gazed in sardonic astonishment upon the two young creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny in this appalling business. Flying from palaces, hiding in tombs, taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead. Funny? And yet there was laughter in their young eyes when they looked at each other, and a curve of astounding amusement in their lips. It touched McClain to wonder. It touched him, clearly, to an odd and aching pain, for he saw suddenly that he was looking upon something deathless and imperishable, yet fragile and fleeting as the breath of time. They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious. He had forgotten Ginny Jeffries. So too, not for the first time, alas, had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them start. You might present me, Jack. Ryder turned. So did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within her vision. Ginny was leaning back against the door. Her hand behind her on the knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment. I didn't know you dug them up alive, she said with a quiver of uncertain humor. My dear Ginny, I'd for Miss Jeffries let me present you to mademoiselle Delcasse, said Jack Gravely. I know that you met her the day of her reception. Only in that moment did Ginny place the haunting recollection. But she was burned, she was killed, she protested, shaken now with excitement. She was not burned, although there was a fire. The man who called himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his pride, for she escaped from him, and he tried to get her back, setting another man, a false father, after her with lying witnesses. Oh, it's a long story. So I had to hide her in this case. But Jack, you! Why were you hiding her? Did you get her out, Stammer Ginny? The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French girl who had been stolen by Tufik Pasha and brought up as his daughter. Oh, that's a long story, too. But at McClain's I had happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in France, and so I knew. And at the reception when I found she hated that marriage I stayed behind, and managed to get her away. Thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that night, so she could escape to France. Oh, France! said Ginny. She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in the dark, misled, ignored. She had been a cat's paw, a bystander. Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute that she cared. But as for this talk of France, her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case, and Ginny found herself looking not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw, too, the sensitive dignity, the delicate, defensive spirit. Really, she was a child. And to have gone through so much, dared such danger. She remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the hideous blacks, and that bright, smiling figure in its misty veil, and now that little figure sat in its strange hiding-place, confronting her with a lost child's eyes. Into Ginny's bright grey eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly moved. It was a mingled emotion. But if some drops for her own disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her compassion was nonetheless true. I'll be so glad to do anything I can to help," she said impulsively. If you have no friends to trust in Cairo. I have no friends to trust beyond this room, said the girl. Then I'll take you to the hotel with me. You can register as one of our party and keep your room till we leave. We are going in four days now, and—oh, I know!—you can come on the same steamer with us to Europe, for there's a woman at the hotel who wants to give up her transportation and go on to the Holy Land. She was moaning about it only this noon. It would all fit in beautifully. It seemed to McLean that an angel from heaven was revealing her blessed goodness. Rider took the revelation delightedly for granted. Bully for you, Ginny, he said warmly. I knew I could count on you. If for one moment a twinge of rye reminder recalled that she had never been able exactly to count upon him, it did not dim his mood. He was alight with triumph. I'll see to the transportation, he said quickly, doing mental arithmetic about present sums in the bank. And we won't wire your aunt until you're safely out of Egypt. Better send a wireless from the ship. I think your aunt is near Paris. We are going to hurry to Paris, said Ginny. That was our regular plan. And London? said McLean. London later, of course—cathedrals, lakes and universities, then London. I shall be in London, said McLean thoughtfully, in June, if he are not too occupied. With cathedrals, said Miss Jeffries. Where are the things, demanded Rider ruthlessly, and thus recalled Ginny produced the bag. McLean moved toward the door. We might go in Mount Goddard in the corridor, he suggested, and he and Ginny stepped outside back into the everyday world of Egypt where nothing at all had been happening, but the arrival of a caravan from the excavations. Within the room Rider stooped and lifted the girl from the case and set her lightly on the floor. Roofily she shook out the torn chiffons of that French audacity of a robe, and with a whimsical smile surveyed the soiled little slippers that she had discarded in her disguise when she had ridden behind the turban rider upon the Arab horse. So little time ago, and yet so long away. After her long lashes she looked up at the young man, who had set the old life crumbling about her at a touch. Wistfulness edged the brave smile with which she murmured, and so it is all arranged so quick. I am safe. I go to the hotel with that nice girl. And I won't be able to see you, he said suddenly. But you have seen me, I'm sure, these many days. Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard. I've marched beside a mummy-case, and we've said so little. It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been achieved they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, nebulous, vague. And now it was upon them. And I have never said thank you, she murmured. I think I began by saying thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education had proceeded to the tease. If, if only you never want to unsay it, he muttered, you don't know what's ahead, life's so uncertain. No, I do not know what is ahead, she told him, but I am free, free for whatever will come. The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned face. Anything is better than that man, she vowed. Even if my aunt, the Madame Delcasse, should not like me, you see, I have thought of everything, and I am not afraid. Like you, she'll love you, said writer Bitterly. She'll go mad over you and give you all she has. She'll marry you to account. Another marriage? A me raised brows of mockery, but I am through with the marriages of convenience. You are so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your feet, said the young man, huskily. He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. Oh, I, you, it's not fair, he muttered incoherently. He had meant, ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the desert, to be very fair, he would not bind her with a word, a touch. Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth. Nobly he had resolved, but now parting was upon him. It's not fair to you, he said desperately, and drew closer. For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The defensive lightness was fled, a breathless wonder shone out at him, a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation, like the gleam of a butterfly's wing. No glamorous moonlight was about them now, no scented shadowy garden, but the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty room with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very flame of youth. Sweet, I'll be on the ship, I'll wait till you are ready, he vowed, and at her low murmur, ready? He gave back, ready for love, with a boy stammer over the first sound of that word between them. But what is this now, she said wondering, yet with a little elfish gleam of laughter, but love. His last resolve went to the winds, and as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was the supreme exultation of triumphant daring. For he had opened the forbidden door, he had challenged the adventure and overcome the risk. He had won, and he would hold his winnings. Ame, he whispered. Ame. Beloved.