 CHAPTER XIX. So should I, dear Miss Biddle, I assured her, but what can I possibly do in such a very intimate matter? Why, you're a diplomat, aren't you? I thought they always knew what to do. You make us all dance your tune like puppets, and imagine we're prancing about to please ourselves. Tell him he's breaking my heart. By Jove, you're not an earnest. I am. Oh, he must come back. I thought on board the Candice we were as good as engaged. I submitted to his kisses, and now—submitted is a good word. I sneered to my inner self. But outwardly I submitted a handkerchief to the lady, as she had lost hers in one of the last donkey-jolts, and ventured to insert sympathetically into a pause a small suggestion. It was usual, I reminded Miss Biddle, if a gentleman's intentions had to be asked, that the father did the asking. This hint, however, fell flatter than a flounder, and all the way to Abidos, most sacred temple of ancient Egypt, I was persecuted with Enid Biddle's woes, when I should have been free to meditate upon the tragic history of Isis and Osiris. It was here that the head of the murdered god was buried, and perhaps his whole body, when the magic secret of thoth had enabled Isis to collect the fourteen separate pieces set had hidden. Many temples claimed the sacred body of Osiris, ruler over departed spirits and amenity, their dim dwelling place beyond the western desert, Phile and Memphis among others, but it was Abidos to which the Egyptians give their most reverent faith, as the true burial place of the beloved one. It was there they wished to lie when they died and were mummied, in order to rest the eternity near the relic of their most precious god. Thus an acropolis grew like a poppy garden of sleep, round the temple, and a city rose also. But even in the long ago time of Strabo the city was reduced to a village, and all traces of the shrine had vanished. The great white jewel of the temples, temple of city I, and the temple of his son Ramesses II, remained to this day, however, with the tablet of ancestors which has helped in the tracing of Egyptian history. Therefore it is that this treasure of the Nile desert is still a shrine for travelers from the four corners of the earth. After the long, straight road and a high, sudden hill we came face to face with the marble white columns of the outer court. If I had been with Brigitte or Monte I could have run back into the past, hand in hand with either, to see with my mind's eyes the white limestone palace of Memnon, copied from the labyrinth standing above the city between the canal and the desert. I should have peered into the depths of its fountain, and with a hand shading my eyeballs from the sun I should have gazed at the grove of forests' sacred acanthus trees, dark against the burning blue. I should have found the royal tombs which Ramesses restored, grouped near the buried body of Osiris. But bad luck gave me enid biddle for my companion. She would not let anyone else come near me, even had the right somebody wished to dispute my battered remains with her. Antonofendi had the others hypnotized, and I wondered if they noticed how like his boldly cut profile was to certain portraits of the youthful Ramesses, carved in the glittering white walls. So splendid were they that had I been a woman my spirit would have rushed back along the sand- obliterated, devious paths of Egypt's history to find and fall at the feet of their original. But there was untuned much easier to get at, and perhaps better worth the gift of a woman's heart than Ramesses the Great, with all his faults and cruelties. Crowds of birds lived in interceases of the broken columns, and their tiny faces peeped out like flowers growing among rocks, their eyes bright and arresting as personal anecdotes in a long dull chapters of history. They seemed to look at me and sympathize, cocking their heads on one side as if to say, poor, foolish, modern man. Why don't you make a virtue of necessity and get rid of this still more foolish modern maid, by promising her anything she asks? Then you can go listen to that princely-looking person in the green turban, who might be descended from the kings our ancestors used to behold. He does seem to know something about the history of this place, on which we are authorities. The dregomans who bring crowds of tourists to our temple and gabble nonsense put us really off our feet. Peep, peep, just hear him tell about the staircase we're so proud of. Did you know there was a picture of it in the Book of the Dead, with Osiris standing at the top, like a good host waiting to receive his guests? Well, then, if you didn't, do anything you must to escape from that love-sick girl, while there's time to hear a real scholar talk of him who is at the head of the staircase. Peep, peep, hurry up or you'll lose it all, silly. Of course, the real staircase is in a mentee, which your Roman Catholics call purgatory, and no doubt Osiris is standing on it to this day. So I took the bird's advice, and promised Enid to have a heart-to-heart talk with Harry Snell. Satisfied that she had got all that was to be got out of me, she powdered her nose, in the same spirit that David anointed in his head, and attached herself to Rachel, in whose train was the desired one. Thus, basically, did I free myself to enjoy the society of Biddy and Osiris, with lovely carved glimpses of ices thrown in, to say nothing of Seti the First and Ramesses the Second. Trying to push into the background of my mind the nauseating thought of my vow and its fulfillment, I helped Bridget and Moni take snapshots of King Seti, showing his son Ramesses how to lasso, and also how to catch by its tail the most fascinating of bulls. They were on the wall, of course, Ramesses and Seti, I mean, not Bridget and Moni, but seemed so real that they might leap off at any instant, and so charmed was Moni with Ramesses' braided lock of youth that she resolved to try one over her left temple in connection with an Egyptian princess costume she was having made for some future fancy dress-ball. I can't take a grain of interest in any one but Egyptian princes and princesses and their profiles, she exclaimed, then blushed faintly and added, I mean, princes and princesses of the past. We got some good pictures of the Temple of Seti, for Moni had an apparatus for natural color photography which gave sensational results in ancient wall paintings, when any one except Moni herself did the taking. It was better still in the seven chapels, the holy of holies at Abidos, and in the joy of my first color photography I forgot the doom ahead. Appropriately the sword I had hung up over my own cranium descended in the necropolis, at that place of the tombs called Um El Ka'ab, mother of pots. Nobody wanted to see the fragments of this mother's pots, but I insisted on a brief visit, as important discoveries have been made there among the most important in Egypt. It was a dreary place where Harry Snell strolled up and caught me alone, gazing at a desolation of sandy hillocks, full of undiscovered treasures. Look here, said he, you're supposed to know everything. Tell me why they call seats outside shops and bazaars and tombs of the ancient empire by the same name, Mustaba. I explained that Mustaba was an Arab word meaning bench. Then realizing that it would be flying in the face of Providence not to get the ordeal over while my blood was up, I spoke of Enid. Among the shattered pots and yawning sepulchres I racked up her broken heart and blighted affections. I talked to Snell like a brother, and when he had heard me through in silence, to the place where words and breath failed, I thought that I had moved him. His eyes were downcast. I fancied that I saw a mist of tears as a man's slow tears. Then suddenly he opened his eyelids wide and glared, a glare stony as the pots and as the desert hills. Borrow, he said, I thought you were a good fellow and a man of the world. I see now that you're a damned sentimental ass. With this he stocked off, and I could not run after him to bash his head, because what he said was perfectly true. I was almost sorry that evening on board the boat when he apologized and the Nile dream went on as if I hadn't broken it by being the sort of fool Snell had said that I was. In the dream were Nile cities, with crowding houses whose walls were heightened by tear upon tear of rose and white pots, molded in with honey-colored mud. There were stretches of sandy shore and green gloom of palm groves. There were domed tombs of saints glittering like snow-palaces in the sun. There were great golden mounds inlaid with strips of paler gold picked out with ebony. There were sinister hillsides cut into squarely by door-holes leading to cave dwellings. There were always shadoofs, where giant soup ladles everlastingly dipped water and threw it out again, mounting up from level to level of the brown, dyke-like shore. The wistful musical wail of the men at the wells was as near to the voice of nature as the sighing of wind, or the breaking of waves which has never ceased since the world began. Sometimes the horizon was opal, sometimes it throbbed with azure fire or blazed ruby red as the torch of sunset swept west and east before the emerald darkness fell. When our enchantress landed, great flocks of kites, like in form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like passing spirits. And at night, when the Nubian boatmen danced, their feet thudding on the lower deck to the cry of the Darabuka, the nile whispered of the past with the tinkling whisper like the music of Hathor's sacred system. Giasas, glided by, loaded with pots like magic melons, long mass pointing as though they had been wands in the hands of astrologers, and the reflection of the piled pots as they moved gave vague glimpses of sunken treasure. Dendurah meant work for Fenton. There had been trouble there, and tourists had complained of insults. It was the Haji's business to find out whether natives or Europeans had been more to blame, and whether there were wrongs to write, misunderstandings to adjust. But to the rest of us, Dendurah meant the sacred temple of Hathor, goddess of love, in some ways one of the most beautiful of all the Nile temples. Though, being not much over two thousand years old, it was built upon ruins more ancient than King Menzis, archaeologists like Neel Sheridan classed it as late Ptolemaic, uninterestingly modern. Mrs. East had been looking forward to the temple of Dendurah, more eagerly to any other, because she had read that on an outer wall was carved the portrait of Cleopatra the Great. That of Caesarean was also there, as she must have known, but Cleopatra's son was never referred to by her reincarnation, who chose to ignore this Caesar incident. Mrs. East had not yet deigned to mount a donkey, but to reach the temple she must do so or walk, or sway in a dangerous looking chaise à porteur. Rather than miss the joy of seeing herself on a stone wall as others had the privilege of seeing her for two thousand years, she consented to accept, as a seat, a large grey animal, tassled with red to keep off flies and evil eyes. Won't you ride with me, Antune Effendi? she asked. I'm afraid. This creature looks as large as an elephant and as wild as a zebra. I feel you could call him. But Antune Effendi was not going to ride. He had other fish to fry, and poor Cleopatra's luminous dark eyes were overflowing lakes, when he had politely excused himself on the plea of a pressing engagement. I felt sure that she would have been kind to Sir Marcus if at that moment he could have appeared from behind the picturesque group of bead necklace-sellers, or emerged from one of the huge, bright-colored baskets exposed for sale on a hill of brown gold sand. I don't know whether it made things better or worse that the grey donkey should be named Cleopatra, but it was evidently a blow when the animal's white-robed attendant announced himself as Anthony. I can't and won't have the creature with me, she murmured, as I helped her to mount when she had pushed the boy aside. Thank you, Lord Ernest, you're very kind, but Antune not to have been here, fancy seeing this temple of all others without an Anthony of any sort on the horizon. A pitiate isn't your middle name. If you could spare time to ride with me that would be better than nothing. I'll be delighted, I said hypocritically, for I had been dying to talk with Brigid about the Manny and Rachel in Bruglio, which, as a hard-worked conductor I had not since Abidos found a chance to discuss. Besides, bitty had whispered in passing that a letter just delivered at Dendera had brought exciting news of Esme O'Brien. But I was sorry for Cleopatra and wondered whether I could manage, after all, to hint an explanation of the hieroglyphic love-letter, that fatal letter of mine which had stealthily made mischief between Mrs. East and Anthony. I didn't quite see how the subject was to be broached. Still some way might open. I'm sorry about the middle name, I said, but if I assumed it like a virtue which I have not, I should be the third person connected with his trip labelled in some fashion. Who is the second person, she asked abruptly, as all the animals of the party started to trot vivaciously through the blowing yellow sand. Sir Marcus, surely you've heard that his A stands for Antonius. Good heavens, she gasped, and I hardly knew whether it was the shock of my news or a jolt of the jonky which forced the exclamation. Whatever it was, the emotion she felt bound her to a silence after that one outburst. She said not a word and did not even groan or threaten to fall off when both our beasts broke into a thumping gallop. In silence we swept round that great bulk of rubbish heap, Roman and early Christian, under which lies Ann, the town of the column. Cleopatra did not cry out when suddenly we came inside of Hathor's temple, honey-gold against the turquoise sky, and vast as some Wagnerian palace of the gods. The tassled donkey, or I, had given her cause to think. Or perhaps she did not consider me worth talking to as we approached the temple toward which all her previous traveling had been a mere pilgrimage. Still silently when we had left our donkeys and were following the crowd of the drumos, Harry Snell actually with Enid, thanks to me and the wisdom of second thoughts, Cleopatra's eyes wandered over the Hathor-headed columns with their clinging color, and over the portal with its brilliant mass of yellow, of dark Pompey in red, and the green-blue sacred to Hathor, whom Horace loved, Venus Hathor, whose priestesses danced within these walls in Cleopatra's day. Oh, this red and this green-blue were my colors, I remember, she murmured, and then hardly spoke when I walked with her in the gloom of the temple itself, the rich gloom under heavily ornamented ceilings. She wanted to save the portrait till the last, she announced, until after she had seen everything else, and she didn't care what Mr. Sheridan said about her temple. It was wonderful. I tried to interest her in the crocodiles, which had been detested and persecuted at Dendera in the late Cleopatra's time, as ardently as they were worshipped at Crocodilopolis and other places. I joked about Old Egypt having consisted of crocs and non-crocs, just as the inhabitants of Florence had to be gulfs or gibbalines. I explained carefully the geography of the place, or rather, reminded Cleopatra of it, adding details of the canal which once lest decoptose, where the magic book of the wisdom of thought lay hidden under the Nile. I could not waken Mrs. East from reverie to interest, as Antune would have had the power to do, but my vanity was not hurt. It was only my curiosity which suffered, for I wanted desperately to know whether the donkey had seriously jolted the lady's spine, or whether the news that Sir M. A. Lark was Marcus Antonius, not a more obvious Marcus Aurelius had fired her imagination. In any case I devoted myself to her while Monty and Bridget frogged with others, and I had a reward of a kind. When we had seen all the halls and chambers, and the crypt with its carvings all fresh as if made yesterday, when we had been on the roof where chanting priests had once awaited the rising of Sirius, when I had taken her outside the temple where blowing columns of dusty sand rose like incense from hidden altars of Hathor, we stood at last alone together, gazing up at the figures of Cleopatra and her son. The wall on which they were carved rose behind the Holy of Holies, where the golden statue of the Goddess had been kept, but alas, the figures themselves! Alas, I knew how Cleopatra must be feeling, and I dared not speak, but I did not look. Instead I gazed helplessly up at that exposed, misshapen form, that flaccid chin. Thank heaven it's only you who are with me, breathed Mrs. That was my reward. Or should I call it a punishment? Anyhow it made it easier for the insignificant person in question to unburden his conscience about the hieroglyphic letter. I stammered it all out, on the way back, apropos of the rubbish heap which had been Tentira. I let it remind me of Fustan on our digging expedition. I had meant to follow Mrs. East's advice, and proposed to Miss Gilder, I explained, but Monty had not found my buried love-letter. What had become of it I had never been told. All I knew was that it hadn't come into Miss Gilder's hands, and I should never have as much courage again. Oh! Cleopatra exclaimed, with a curious light in her eyes, more like relief than disappointment. You really do want to marry my niece? You delayed so that I wondered. I wasn't sure, sometimes, if it were Monty or—but I'm on your side, Lord Ernest. It isn't too late yet for any of us, perhaps. Trust in me, I'm going to help you. I could have bitten my tongue out, though I had blundered with the best intentions. Mrs. East, I protested almost ferociously. You mustn't do anything. I said before I began that I was going to tell you a secret. I won't betray your confidence, but I will help. I want to. It would be a good thing for Monty to accept you, Lord Ernest, a very good thing in more ways than one. Mrs. Jones wants it too, or did. I promise you I'll be discreet. With that we arrived inside of the boat. Once more necklaces and scarabs and baskets were thrust under our noses. Anthony had returned from his mysterious whisperings in cafes or mosques in the new town and was waiting for us. Cleopatra called him, with a note of gaiety in her voice, to help him off the elephant. He came. I felt she was going to hint to him that I was in love with Monty—hint to Bridget also. Virtue may be its own reward, but it makes you very lonely. I had another easy moment for dreaming the Nile dream, and we all woke out of it when, with the pink dawn of a certain morning, we saw a vast temple, repeated column for column in the clear river as a mirror of glass. We were at Luxor, and somewhere not far off, May Bella Hanem was praying for release. CHAPTER 20. THE ZONE OF FIRE. Just at the first moment of waking, when I was moved by my subconscious self to roll out of my birth and bound to the cabin window, I forgot that we had anything more active to do at Luxor than worship the glory of sky and river and temples. I had room in my mind only for the dream beauty of that astounding picture, into the foreground of which I seemed to have been thrust so close upon my eyes loomed the line of lotus columns. It was as if the ancient gods had poured a libation of ruby wine from their zenith dwelling into the translucent depths of the Nile. Even the long, colonnade of broken pillars was deep rose red against a pale rose sky, repeated again in deeper rose down in the magic world beneath the pink crystal roof of shining water. Then suddenly bright windows of sky behind the dark rose columns flared to the color of prim roses, were shot with pansy purple and cleared to the transparent green of unflod emerald. The thought came as I gazed at the carved wonder, reflected flower for flower and line for line in the still river, that here was illustrated in unearthly beauty the chief religious legend of ancient Egypt. As each human soul was believed to be part of the world soul Alsiras, reunited with him beyond the western desert after death, so did these columns made by human hands unite themselves at sunrise with the soul of the Nile, the life of Egypt. I caught a glimpse as if in an illuminated parable of the Egyptian cosmos, the heavens, the earth, the depths, three separate entities, yet forever one as is the Christians trinity. Almost I expected to see the sunboat of the gods steered slowly across the river from the city of kings, westward to the tombs of kings, and the little white breasted birds, which promenaded the deck of our boat as though it belonged to them, which might have been heartbirds from the world of mummies across the Nile, escaped for a glimpse of Romacy's gaily painted mosaic white palace with its carved brass balconies, its climbing roses, its lake of lotuses and its river gardens. I was sure that if I told these tiny creatures that the pharaohs and all their glories had vanished off the earth except for a few bits in museums they would not believe the tale. I wasn't even sure I believed it myself, and deliberately blotting out of sight the big modern hotels and the low white line of shops away to the right of the temple, I tried to see with the bobbirds, eastern thieves as it must have been in the days of Romacy's the second. I pictured the temple before canvases the Persian and the great earthquake felled arches and pillars, obelisks and kingly structures. I built up again the five story houses of the priests and nobles, glistening white and fantastically painted in many colors. I laid out lawns and flower beds and set fountains playing. Then, with a rumbling shock, a chasm many thousand years deep yawned between me and ancient no, the city of palaces. It was the voice of Sir John Biddle which opened the ravine of time and let the Nile pour through it. He was on deck in pajamas and overcoat with General Harlow, holding forth on his favorite topic of mummies, an appropriate subject for this neighborhood of all others, yet I should have preferred silence. Poor Sir John, he had been disappointed in Cairo because a villain had not lurked behind each tree of the Esbequia garden, and notes tied with silken black hairs had not tumbled on his respectable bald head from the mystery of lattice windows, but he was thoroughly enjoying his Nile trip and learning something every day to tell at home. Lady Biddle had humiliated him twice, once by asking me if those old hieroglyphics were written in Arabic, again by inquiring whether the stone-barred temple windows had been filled in once with pretty stained glass. But he had forgiven her because yesterday had been their silver wedding day, and he meant to buy her a present at some curiosity-shop at Luxor. A pity it isn't the wooden wedding, I heard him say to General Harlow, for I might give a handsome mummy-case. I suppose silver will have to be Persian or Indian unless I can get hold of one of those old bracelets or discs the Egyptians used for money, but that's too good to hope for. It certainly was, though no doubt some industrious manufacturer of antiques would cheerfully have made and dug up any amount on the side of Ramaziz Palace, could he have known in time. We were to have three days at Luxor, three days when three months would have been too little, and the second attempt at abducting an ill-used lady from the harem of her treacherous lord would take place as soon as we could learn that our auxiliaries, the Bronsons, had arrived. Until they were on the spot even a success might prove an anticlimax. Meanwhile I had plenty to do in playing my more obvious part of conductor and arranging the last details of our excursion program. Everyone had bundled out early to see the sunrise. Consequently most members of the set were cross or hungry or both. Nothing could be less suitable than to clamor for porridge on the Nile, but they did it, and called for bacon, too, in a land where the pig is an unclean animal. They were the same people who played koon-can and bridge on the deck at twilight, when moving figures on shore were etched in black on silver, or against flaming wings of sunset, and in gathering darkness the blue-robed Shadoof men who bent and rose against gold-brown dykes were like Persian enamels done on copper. Hundred gated thieves, the dwelling of Amenra, whom Greece adopted as Jupiter Amun, used to lie on both banks of the dial, the East for the living, the West for the dead, and those who lived by catering for mummy-hood. I had arranged to take our people first round Luxor, making them acquainted with the temple which had already introduced its reflection to us. As for the town, they were capable of making themselves acquainted with that, its hotels and curiosity shops, when there was nothing more important on hand. Next was to come Karnak, the father of temples, once connected with the younger temple at Luxor as if by a long, jeweled necklace of ram-headed sphinxes. And for those whose brains and legs were intact, by evening I thought of a visit to the thrilling temple of Mutt. This last would be an adventure, for Mutt, goddess of matter, the mother goddess, has apparently not taken kindly to Muslim rule. Any disagreeable trick she and her attendant, black statues of passion, fierce second, can play on a devout Mohammedan, or meet and drink to her. But she can work her spells only after dark. Therefore none save the bravest Arab will venture his head inside her domain past sunset. I was sure we could get no dragemen to go with us, and equally sure that the adventure would be more popular for its spice of horror. The second and third days I allotted to Western thieves, the city of the dead, the tombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens and the nobles, then the ramaceum, the musical memnon, with his companion Colossus, and the great temples wrapped in the ruddy fire of the Western desert, where Hathor receives the setting sun in outstretched arms. As I was about to unfold these projects at breakfast, a telegram was handed to me. I read it, and while bacon-plates were being exchanged for dishes of marmalade, I cuddled my brain like a slave to make it rearrange the whole program without a hitch. The American consul wired from a suet that he was detained by an important personage who wanted to know things about Egyptian cotton and its enemy the bowlworm. But Mr. and Mrs. Bronson would arrive at the villas serious, Luxor, day after tomorrow, ready for emergencies. Of course, being conductor of a tour and next to man, I ought to have put the interest of Sir Marcus and his lark pie, as we were called by rival firms, ahead of personal concerns. I ought to have emulliated myself in the Western mummy-land with the consciousness of duty done, while on the eastern side of the Nile, Anthony Fenton and Monty Gilder and Biddy played the live, modern game of kidnapping a lady. But I determined to do nothing of the sort. I gazed at the telegram with the air of committing to a heart instructions from my superior officer, and without sign of inward tremor, announced that we would explore the wonders of the West before visiting those nearer at hand. The weather being cool and the wind not too high, I said, it would be well to seize this opportunity for the valley of the tombs of the kings, an expedition trying in heat or sandstorms. Tomorrow also would be devoted to the West, and our third day would belong to Luxor and Karnak. As a bon-bouche I dangled the adventure of the temple of Mutt to sweeten the temper of the grumblers, but there were no grumblers. The set listened calmly to my honeyed plausibilities, and the alarmed stewards dare not betray their consternation at the lightning change. No doubt they thought me mad or worse, because a day in Western Thebes meant a picnic, magical apparition at the right moment in a convenient tomb of smiling Arabs and Nubian men with baskets of food and ice drinks. Somehow the trick had to be managed, however, for I must be in Eastern Thebes, alias Luxor, on the day when the Bronson's presence would render our second attempt at rescue feasible. I had to interview the chef, a formidable person, hypnotizing him and the stewards to work my will, and above all I had to make sure of boats and donkeys for the party at short notice. Only by a miracle could all go well, but I set my heart upon that miracle. Antoun, hurriedly taken into my confidence, volunteered to arrange about the boats and the donkeys for the other side. Fortunately there was no rival ahead of us, and with juggling of plans and a jingle of silver, Antoun's part was done. Just at the moment when, by dint of bribes and adjurations I had induced the chef and stewards to smile, Fenton dashed on board to cry, Victory! Somehow, less than an hour later than we should have started, we got off in two big boats with white sails and brown rowers. The canvas did its work in silent, bulging dignity, but the rowers exhausted themselves by breathlessly imploring Allah to grant them strength, and shouting extra prayers to some sailor saint whose name was calculated to pump dry the strongest lungs. On the mystic western side, where once landed with pomp and spagent the sun-boat of the gods and the morning boats of the dead, we scrambled on shore with a rybald mirth which always made the set feel it was getting its money's worth of enjoyment. Many donkeys and a few carriages awaited us, the whole equipment previously engaged for to-morrow, and an opaline sunshine which stained with pale rose-the-theven hills and piled the shadows full of dark, dull rubies, we started across an emerald plain, kept ever-vernant by Nile water. The touch of comedy in the dream of beauty was the queer, mud-brick village of Khurna, with its tomb dwellings of the poor and immense mud-vases shaped like mushrooms, standing straight up on thick brown stems before the crowded hovels. In each phase were posed sleeping babies, brooding hens, dogs, rabbits, or any other livestock, mixed with such rubbish as the family possessed, and the most ambitious mushrooms were decorated with barbaric crenellations. Almost as far as the temple of Seti I flowed the green wave like a lake in the desert, but beyond, to join the Sahara, rolled and billowed a waste of pink-rose sand, shot with topaz light, and walled with fantastic rocks, yellow and crimson, streaked with purple. In the heart of each shadow fire burned like dying coals in a mass of rosy ashes, and the light overall was luminous as light on southern seas at moonrise and sunset. Before our eyes seemed to float a diaphanous veil of gilded gauze, and white robes and red sashes of donkey-boys, animals' bead necklaces and blue or green scarves on girls' hats were like magical flowers blowing over the gold of the desert. Everything blue, above all, sand blue. We found that to our sorrow, after we had seen the temple of Kerna, with its noble columns and its fine fragment of roof, where squares of sky were let in like blocks of lapis lazuli. I rushed here and there on donkey-back, assuring people that this was not wind we felt, it was only a breeze. We could not have had a more favorable day for our excursion into this world of the dead. Why, if we'd wade till tomorrow we might have met a real wind, perhaps even come sin, alias simun, the terror of the desert. To make Miss Hasset Bean and Cleopatra forget the smarding of their eyes, I told them what a true sandstorm was like, and how its names in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian all come from the fiend Samuel, who destroyed caravans just as devil came from the Persian div. Our little breeze was from the east, which at thebes in old days was considered lucky. The west wind used to bear across the river evil spirits disguised as sand-clouds. And these wicked ones had not far to travel, because the Tutt, or underworld, was a long narrow valley parallel to Egypt, beginning on the west bank of the Nile. Red-haired Set was ruler there, the god who had to be propitiated by having kings named after him. But Ra, greater than he, could safely pass down the dim river running through that world, could pass in his golden sun-boat guided by magic words of thoth instead of oars or sails, and the guardian hippopotamuses, whom Greeks turned into the dog Cerberus, dared not put out a paw. Mrs. East remembered that thebes was tape in her day, at which Miss Hasset Bean snorted. And when out came that familiar story about Cleopatra making red hair fashionable, Miss Hasset Bean stared coldly at the lady's auburn waves. I wonder if the queen got the color at her hairdressers, as people do now, she murmured. I've read that they had beauty doctors in those days, and used arsenic for their complexion, and all sorts of mixtures. Besides, I can't imagine anything natural about Cleopatra, except the ass wanting to bite her. Upon this, Mrs. East retaliated by calling her companion Miss Bean without the Hasset. I shall always think of the valley of the tombs as a place of terror and splendor, meant to be hidden for mortals by the spells of thoth, who circled the rock houses of the dead with the zone of fire, as wanton hid Brunhilda, and decreed that they should be lost forever in the blazing desert. Despite thoth and his magic, men have burst through the blazing belt, and found in the gold rose-heart of the rots, sacred shrines the wise old god would have protected. They have found many, but not all, for in the breast of some one among thoth-sleeping lions, which masquerade as rocks, may yet be discovered atoom, better than all those we know with their buried store of jewels and their painted walls like drapings of strange tapestry. We broke through the zone of fire, and it pursued us with burning smoke of sand, pink as powdered rubies. Always it was beautiful and terrible as we rode in the blowing pink mist, and still it was beautiful and terrible when half days we slipped off donkeys or slid out of carriages to enter the tombs which the desert had vainly striven to hide. It was hot and breathless in those underground chambers scooped out of solid rock thousands of years ago that great kings and their queens and families and friends might rest with their cause in eternal privacy. Enid Biddle waited until Harry Snell happened to be exactly behind her and then fainted, with dexterity beyond praise. Cleopatra, however, was in her element. She felt at home and did not turn one of those auburn hairs scorned by Miss Bean at a site of the royal mummies lit up by electricity in their coffins. These gave the rest of us a shock, our nerves being already in the condition of Aladdin's on his way down to the cave of jewels. When the guardian of the tomb of Amenhotep, the king had several other names which annoyed Sir John Biddle, darkened the painted royal chamber of death and suddenly lit up several white sleeping faces, the ghostly dusk was alive with little gasps. There lay Amenhotep himself in a disproportionately large sarcophagus of rose-red granite from Suan, and in companion coffins were a woman and a girl, all three brilliantly illuminated. They had the look of the light hurting their poor eyes and being outraged because, against their will, they were treated as if they had been painted by old masters. The dreadful rumour ran that the woman was none other than the great queen Hatsutsu, never mind her more scientific names, her mummy never having been found, or at any rate identified, and it was pitiful seeing her so small and female when in life she had wished to be represented with a beard and the clothing of a man. Our Dregelman, who read English newspapers and whose idea of entertaining his crowd was to make cheap jokes, just as his family, doubtless manufactured cheap scarabs, announced that Hatsutsu was the first suffragette. But even those who thought her downtrodden nephew, Tutmoth III, identified in erasing every trace of her existence wherever possible, did not smile at this jest. In fact, having Antune in me to refer to, the set as a whole sat upon the unfortunate Dregelman, trying to talk him down in tombs and temples, or ostentatiously reading Vygol, Maspero, Petri, Sladen, and Lorimer when he attempted to give them information. A few with kinder intentions, however, interrupted his flow of historical narrative by exclaiming, Why, yes, of course, I thought so, and now I remember. He revenged himself by advising everybody to buy antiques from an extraordinarily old gentleman, extremely like a galvanized mummy. The antiques were extraordinary, too, so everybody took the Dregelman's advice, neglecting the other curiosity-merchants of the squatting row near the luncheon tomb and the glorious three-tier temple, in that vast copper cup of desert and cliff which is called Der El-Bahari. The sail in mummied hawks, gilded ramshorns, broken tiles with beetles flying out of the sun, boats of the gods and gods themselves, was brisk round this ancient gentleman who advertised a blue mummy-cap by wearing it on his bald-pate, and seemed to possess as many royal scarves as dressmaker has pins. Afterward I learned that he was our Dregelman's father, but I was loyal and did not tell. It was a wonderful day, all the more wonderful, perhaps, because it left in the mind a colorful confusion. Pictures of painted tombs hidden deep under red rock and drifted sand, tombs which we should perhaps never reach again through their guarding zone of fire, tombs of kings and queens and nobles forgotten through the thousands of centuries, saved by their cause and baws, their friends and servants, painted or sculptured on the walls with the sole purpose of caring for or entertaining them eternally. We had ceased to remember which was which. And back on the boat, in the hour of sunset, when disling tinsel and pale-pink cloud-flowers sailed over a lake of clear green sky, the set argued whether the king with the horses, or the queen with the retrosé-nose, was in this or that tomb. Sir John Biddle recalled the fact that Egyptian horses had been celebrated, and that it was a swell a thing to be a charioteer, then as it was now to be a Vanderbilt with a coach in four. As for a retrosé-nose, it didn't matter where it was, on a tomb-wall or a girl's face. Monnie thought differently. She and Biddy were glad that the sand and rocks would still hide many secret treasures, while the world lasted. It would be dreadful to think that everything was dug up for tourists to pry into or to cart away into museums, and no mysteries left. As for Mrs. East, she was doubtful whether to rejoice or grieve that Cleopatra's mummy had not been found. If, however, it were like the incised portrait on the Wallet Dendera, it would be well that it should share the fate of Alexander's body and remain lost forever. The next day gave us another trip to the west of the Nile, not again in the burning desert, but only as far as the Ramaceum, and then to see the Colossae, seated side by side on their green carpet of meadow, looking out past the centuries toward eternity. We had a dance on board that night, and next morning it came out that Rachel Guest, who had disappeared during a turkey trot and a castle walk, had got herself engaged to Bailey. I was not as pleased about this event as was Enid Biddle, who now saw her title clear to Harry Snell, for I had bagged Willis Bailey and Neil Sheridan for Sir Marcus in order to gain kudos for myself. But Biddy appealed to, consoled me by saying that it served Bailey right if he were mercenary, and that both men would have come in any case. The third day was to be the great day for us, the day with big fate for Mabella Hanim, and the first thing that happened was a letter sent by hand from the Bronsons at the Villa Sirius. They had arrived. The fireworks could begin. CHAPTER XXI. The opening door. Not half an hour after the first word from Bronson came another hurried note. An unexpected obstacle had cropped up. So confident had he and Mrs. Bronson been of their friend's cooperation, that rather than put such an important matters on paper, they had waited to explain by word of mouth. The owner of the villa was a rich Syrian with a French-American wife. He was a cop in religion, hating Muhammadism in general, and the father of Rashid Bey in particular. This had seemed to the American consul a providential combination, but to his disgust he found that there had been a reconciliation between the families. Demetrius Nikian would not betray the Bronson's confidence, but he could not allow his roof to be used as a shelter for Rashid's runaway wife. No, not even if Rashid had three other wives in his harem. Here was a situation, and as Monty remarked in neat American slaying, we're right up against it. She thought that, if Antoon and I put our heads together, maybe we could think of some way out. So we did almost literally put our heads together across a table, no bigger than a handkerchief in my cabin, and decided that the visit to Rashid Bey's harem must be made by Bridget and Monty in the late afternoon. They must time their departure from the house at about the hour when the set would arrive at the Temple of Mut. Antoon would be waiting for them, and they would drive in a closed Arabia to the Temple, where Mr. and Mrs. Bronson would happen to be sight-seeing. If Mabella Hanim had been rescued, she would then be put in charge of the American consul, whose very footprints created American soul around him as far as his shoes could reach. Rashid would be unlikely to search at the Temple of Mut, nor could he induce any Arab servant to accompany him there after sundown. We would escort Mabel and her two protectors to the town and to the train for Cairo, Mr. Bronson promising to take the girl to Alexandria once she could sail for home. It was the best plan we could think of in the circumstances, and Monty approved it, though her patience was tried by having to wait through nearly all of another day. Mabel must have begun to believe that we had ignored her prayer and meant to do nothing. I argued that the girl would believe we were working for her in our own way. I said, too, that if Rashid were spying his suspicions would be disarmed by seeing us go the ordinary round of tourists. Everyone came to Luxor. We had come, leisurely, by river, and more sight-seeing every moment. Even better, if he were on the spot, intended to finish his revenge as neatly as he had begun, could have noticed nothing suspicious in our actions. The mention of better in this connection seemed to startle Biddy, and I was sorry I had let his name slip. But, as I had said, everyone came to Luxor. Better had, with apparent frankness, explained that he was traveling up the Nile by rail with his two clients, and if that were true he would arrive at all our destinations in advance of us. Probably it would depend on the clients whether they lingered at Luxor long enough for us to run across them again. What are you afraid of, I asked Biddy, when I had a chance with her alone, even if better is the spy. Surely you kept your promise and left that chamois skin in a Cairo bank. It wasn't a promise, she reminded me. I only said I'd think about it. Well, I did think about it, and I couldn't put it in a bank. I told you it was the sort of thing one doesn't put in banks. You didn't tell me what it was. I mean, what was in it besides money? No, I couldn't. Will you now? Oh, no. Well, then, will you give it to me to keep till we get back to Cairo? No, indeed, but duffer, dear, honestly and truly it isn't for myself I'm afraid. You know that, don't you? Of course. Yet if people are believing that Monnie Gilder is Rachel Guest, a poor little school teacher, then no one who heard the gossip would bother to risk kidnapping her for ransom. And also there will be no further danger of those you fear mistaking her for. Oh, don't speak the name. I wasn't going to. I was merely about to use the word another. Good duffer, yours is a consoling argument. Still, I never liked better or wanted him with us. And even now there seems something mysterious about Rachel thinking so much of him. As if there were a secret arrangement between them, you know. I've never got over that or understood it a bit. He flattered Miss Guest, perhaps. She loves flattery. But she's made her market now and all through Monnie's charity. She couldn't want to do her benefactress harm. No, I suppose not, unless it were to do herself good. Don't those eyes of hers say to you that she'd sacrifice any one for herself? I've been thinking more about a different pair of eyes, and there were such a lot of men crowding round Rachel's for some reason or other. Now we know what the reason was, as she and Monnie must have known all along since their joke together began. Oughtn't you to tell Bill Bailey the truth? No, my dear girl, I must draw the line somewhere. I've gone about it people's beck and call, telling other people disagreeable truths till I'm a physical and mental wreck. Bill Bailey knows all about statues, and with and without glass eyes. Let him find out for himself about a mere girl, with cat's eyes, bitty snap. If one triumph leads to another, Anthony could afford to be hopeful for the ending of our stay at Luxor. He had not done as much sight-seeing as the rest of us, but when we had been asleep in our beds or births, dreaming of temples or of each other, he had been out whispering and listening, in places where his green turban opened doors and hearts. He had traced the mysterious trouble to its source, and learned the inner history of that regrettable instant which, like a dropped match, had little fire hard to extinguish. A party of young men traveling with a bear leader had laughed at some Arabs prostrating themselves to pray, at that sacred moment, just after sunset, ordained by Muhammad lest his people should appear to worship the orb itself. One of these youths, fancying himself a mimic, had imitated the Muslims. They were old men, unable to resent with violence what they thought an insult to their religion, but they had told their sons and the story had spread. Later that night the joyous tourists with their nearsighted bear leader had been attacked, apparently without reason, on coming out of a native cafe. Having forgotten the sunset prayer, they honestly believed that they had been set upon by men to whom they had given no provocation. They had uttered statements and complaints, and disgusted with the beastly natives had pursued their journey up Nile, visiting their grievances on the innocent, and making more mischief at each stopping-place. Mermurt threats, with dark looks, insulting words, and jostling of strangers by the inhabitants of upper Nile villages, had occasioned anxiety at the British agency. It had proved impossible to get at the truth, and the influence of the young nationalists had been suggested. Our haji had now turned the green light of his sacred turban upon obscurity, and those in power at Cairo would know how to set about repairing damages. In spite of private anxieties, those which I shared and others which I didn't share but suspected, I think Anthony was happy on that third morning at Luxor. He must have been tired, for much of his work had been at night, but he showed no fatigue. The true soldier look was in his eyes, the look I knew far better than the new and strange expression which had said to me lately, a woman has come to be of importance in Anthony Fenton's life. We spent our morning and a good part of the afternoon at Carnac, lunching irreverently but agreeably in the shade of fallen pillars, Cambysys or the other great earthquake had thrown down. Nile Sheridan, who had been to California, likened the ready columns of the great hall to the giant redwoods. He was enjoying Carnac because there was practically nothing modern and Ptolemaic about it, but I thought how quickly he would lose this calmness of the student if someone blurted out a word of our plan for that evening. According to Manny he had been taken with poor Mabella Hanim on board the Laconia, admiring her so frankly that Rashid had banished his bride to her cabin. If Sheridan regretted her, as a man regrets a woman vainly loved, he had invited in no one, not even Manny, who had risked seeming to seek his society in order to reach the secret of his heart. He had, however, been graver in manner than at first, so said the girl, who had been much with him before my appearance on the scene. Whether it was intuition or sheer love of romance which inclined her to the opinion, she believed that Sheridan was unhappy. It would make things worse for Mabel if our scheme failed were Nile Sheridan mixed up in the plot. Therefore even impulsive Manny admitted the wisdom of keeping him out of it. But I could see by the way she looked at him, almost pityingly, when he discourse of lotus and papyrus columns, how she was saying to herself, You poor fellow, if only you knew. The thing being to see the temple of Luxor at sunset, we gave it the afternoon, as if condescending to do it a favour. When I remembered how I had meant to linger here week after week, I felt that I was paying a big prize for my share of the mountain of the golden pyramid, making a knock about comedian of myself, rushing through halls of history followed by a procession of tourists, as a comet tears past the best worth seeing stars, obediently followed by its tail. Still I had Bridget and Manny as bright spots in the tail, and my old dreams of Luxor had been empty of them. These ideas were in my mind, while on donkeys and in Arabias we dashed as if our lives depended on speed, from the temple of Carnac to the temple of Luxor, along the dusty white road trimmed with sphinxes. This description was Enid Biddles, she being happy and therefore frivolous. She rode with Harry Snell as queens may have ridden along that way, guarding a captive prince who had been subdued forever. Sunset illuminated the world, as for a New Year's festival of Amun Ra in his ruby-studded boat of gold, when we were ready to leave the glorious temple and turn to the region of little bazaars and big hotels, fair gardens and girls with tennis rackets whose shape reminded our Egypt's steeped minds of the key of life. Manny and Bridget had slipped away, their real day was just beginning. My heart was with them, Anthony's too, and his work permitted him to conduct his heart along the way that they must take, while I had to conduct the set to the Winter Palace Hotel and give them tea on the terrace. When everybody was rested and had had enough strawberry tarts, view and flirtation, we were to make for the temple of Mut, and having returned at last to Enchantress Isis, were to steam away just as tourist boats and Ahabiyas were lighting up along the shore. We were to dine late after starting and anchor in some dark solitude so as to enjoy a peaceful dogless night on the Nile. But what would have happened to Bridget and Manny before the sounding of that dinner-gong? What did happen at the beginning I must tell as best I can because I was not there and can speak for myself only from the temple of Mut. When they stole almost secretly away from Karnak they took an Arbiyah which was wading and drove to the sugar plantation of Rashid Bay. This place of his is not prepared for a lengthy or luxurious residence, but as I have said there is a house. There is also a small gate-house in a somewhat neglected condition, but a gatekeeper was there, the usual stout negro. Manny and Biddy were quivering with fear lest they should be refused admission as at Asuat, but this time their coachman was Ahmed Atun, carefully disguised as a common driver of an Arbiyah, a rather exaggeratedly common driver, perhaps, for his face and turban were not as clean as the face and turban of a self-respecting Muslim ought to be. He had been helped to play this trick by one of the secret friends he had made in some cafe or other, the cousin of an uncle of a brother of him who should have sat on the bop seat. But the motive he had alleged was not the real one. The two beating hearts in the Arbiyah had confidence in him. If the gatekeeper tried to send them away, Atun would bribe him or threaten him with black magic, or say some strange word which would be for them as an open sesame. The fat creature at the gate had no French, but the driver of the Arbiyah addressed him in Arabic and translated his answers. Yes, the great lady had come hither with her husband the bay. Word should go to her. It should be ascertained whether it was her pleasure to receive these friends who had journeyed from a far country to pay her a visit. Manny and Bridget sat in the Arbiyah to wait, but they dared not talk to the dirty-faced driver lest some spy should be on the watch, where every group of flowering plants might have ears and eyes. Even if the big gatekeeper came back with an excuse, as seemed too probable, there was hope from Anton's diplomacy, but the chances were two to one against success. Rashid Bey had almost certainly been put on his guard by the revengeful better who had shown himself all grinning friendliness to us. Rashid might have tired of playing dragon as Atun prophesied. Yet it would be strange if he had not given instructions that no European ladies were to visit his wife. May Bella Hunim had been snatched in haste from Asuat, but if she were still in Luxor with her husband she and her women in the harem would be guarded by eunuchs, as in the more ambitious villa which Rashid called his home. I suppose Anthony, slouching on the box seat in his unattractive disguise, must have been as much astonished as Manny and Bridget when the gatekeeper returned with another big negro to say that the ladies would be welcomed by May Bella Hunim. The two girls were wildly delighted. Fenton's emotions were mixed. He wanted to save the American bride from the consequences of her tragic mistake, but he cared more for his friend's safety than for hers. He knew that Manny and Bridget were brave and that Manny had his browning, but the thought that she might need to use it could not have made him comfortable in the box seat of his borrowed Arbia outside Rashid's gate. It was arranged that he should give Maybell's visitors one hour, thus allowing for delays and emergencies, but if they did not appear at that end of that time he would dash off to tell the Luxor police that two ladies were detained against their will in the house of Rashid Bey. Once in charge of the chief eunuch, who had come to take them to the harem, Bridget and Manny might almost as well been deaf and dumb, but Bridget knew practically nothing of Arabic and Manny, though she had been vaguely studying since her arrival, had been too passionately occupied with other things to give much time or attention to the language of Egypt's invaders. Her blood was veeting in her veins now, and she could think of no words except Ishmi, Malish, and Masalama. These buzzed in her head like persistent flies as she and Bidi followed their silent, white-robed and turbaned conductor along a narrow pink path toward a modern villa almost shrouded with Bougainbiya. And they were the last words she needed. She didn't want to tell the ponderous negro to get out. On the contrary, she wished to be polite. So far from saying no matter, everything mattered intensely. And, unfortunately, it was not time yet to bid the creature farewell. Behind the White House, with its crimson embroidery of flowers, rose a thick growth of tall sugarcane, the shimmering green pale as barrel in the dreaming light which precedes sunset. The dark red of the Bougainbiya looked like streaming blood against such a background. Though the villa appeared to be comparatively new, it was built according to Turkish, not European ideas, as it might have been where the owner acopped instead of a Mohammedan. The building was in two parts, entirely separating the Semelik from the Haramlik. The latter was small and insignificant compared with the former, for this was not a place prepared for family life. It was but a temporary dwelling where the master would more often come alone than with the ladies of his harem. The eunuch opened a door leading into the woman's building, and Brigid and Moni entered the same secretive sort of vestibule they must have remembered in the House of the Crocodile. A screen-wall prevented them from seeing what was beyond, and the dead silence frightened them a little, so easy was it to make of this place a trap. In the vestibule was a long, cheaply cushioned bench, the resting place of the woman's custodian, and upon it lay spread open the unit's well-used Koran, which he had deserted to meet the visitors. Who had given him the order to go, and why it had been given, the guests began to ask themselves. Beyond the screen-wall they entered an ante-room. Through a big window-door they could look into a small, grassy court that served as a garden, and opening from the ante-room was the second room much larger, which also gave upon the garden court. At the door of this the eunuch bowed himself away, but an involuntary glance which Moni threw at him over her shoulder showed that he was grinning. The grin dyed quickly as a white flash of heat-lightning fades from a black night sky, but though the heavy face composed itself respectfully, there remained a disquieting tinkle in the full lidded eyes. It struck Moni that the negro was amusing himself at the expense of the visitors because of something he knew which they did not know. We're not going to be allowed to see Mabel, she thought, with the jump of her pulses, and even when a negroes, smiling invitingly, beckoned her and Biddy into the large room whose three windows looked on the garden, she still believed that they had been deceived. She did not, however, speak out her conviction to Bridget. Nothing could be done yet. They must wait and see what happened. The room was furnished in abominable taste, with cheap, trench furniture, upholstered with blue brocade that clashed hideously with the scarlet carpet. There were several sofas and chairs stiffly arranged round the walls, but no tables save low maedas of carved wood inlaid with pearl, such as they had seen in Cairo bazaars and hotels. The windows were closed and the air heavy as in a room seldom used. The two seated themselves close together on one of the ugly sofas facing a door through which the beckoning negress had gone out. There was no sound except the harsh ticking of a huge bulbous clock, all gilding in flowers which stood in a corner. Moni's and Bridget's eyes met with a question. Who would open the door just closed? Would it be Mabel or would Rashid Bey stride in, to reproach or insult them? Are you sure it's loaded?" Biddy whispered. No need for Moni to ask what she meant. Sure, she answered. The handle of the door turned. CHAPTER XXII OF IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT. IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT. IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT. IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT. IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT. IT HAPPENED to punish me for complaining to you." "'But how did he know?' Manny asked. "'Did your sister-in-law tell him about the letter?' "'I don't think so, unless he has made her confess. It was like this. He was coming to his place here on business. I felt so thankful. It seemed providential he should be away then, just when you were starting up the Nile. I was almost happy that morning, when suddenly he appeared again, and I was ordered to put on a habera and a yashmuk, and travel with him. Yena, the woman who acts as my maid, had to get ready in a hurry, too. The chief eunuch, a hateful, hypocritical wretch, followed. Some clothes have been sent to me since, but not many. At first I couldn't guess what had happened, and he was in such a fiendish temper I daren't ask questions. It wasn't till after we arrived that he explained. I'm sure he took pleasure in hurting me. He said that he left home early the morning he was going to Luxor, because he meant to stop and make a business call on the way to the depot. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to rush home and fetch me as he did, and still be in time to catch his train after the warning. It was some drago-man you employed in Cairo, he told me, who had seen us getting off the Laconia, and who ran after his carriage in the street in Asuit. The wicked creature warned him that you were all there, and that he'd heard you say something which sounded as if there was a plot to get at me. Just at that minute, by the worst of luck, Mr. Sheridan passed. You know how foolish and cruel he was about Mr. Sheridan on the ship. Well he hadn't forgotten, so he turned round and almost stashed me out of the house, rather than I should be left in Asuit with him away. This is exactly what we thought must have happened, explained Manny, that beast better, and to think that I and Rachel wasted our time trying to convert him. How I wish I hadn't let Aunt Clara engage him at Alexandria. She thought he'd come from a man with her favourite name, Antony, but she wouldn't have insisted if I hadn't encouraged her. I feel as if this trouble were partly my fault, and if I hadn't been thoughtless enough at Asuit to blurt out your husband's name, you're not to blame for anything, dearest, Bitty tried to comfort her. It was your unfailing resolve to help which has brought us here. You're both my good angels, said Mabel. Oh, it's heavenly to see you, but I can't understand why I'm allowed to after all the threats and punishments. I'm afraid I shall be made to pay somehow. He loves to torture me, and he knows how. I believe he hates me. Now he's begun to realize that I'd give anything to leave him, that I don't consider myself his wife. If he hates you, why isn't he willing to let you go? Manny questioned her. Partly because he's very vain and it would humiliate him. Partly because he has no son yet, only that horrid little brown girl, and he set his heart on a boy who's to possess all the qualities and strength of the West. No, he won't let me go. Well, you'll do it in spite of him, then, said Manny eagerly. That's what we're here for. We shall take you with us. You must say to your servants that we've invited you for a drive, and you've accepted. There's nothing in that to make them suspect. Lots of Turkish ladies go driving and motoring with European women in Cairo, and you can have that fat black man sit on the box seat, with our coachmen, if it would make things easier, taking him to guard you. He can be hustled or bribed or something when the right time comes to get rid of him. Never fear. Oh, it's going to be a glorious adventure, and at the end of it you'll be free. Nobody could blame you, as the man has another wife. Me bella hanem shook her head. You're splendid to plan this, but it's too late. It was too late from the moment that Draigelman warned my husband. Why you've been allowed to come into the house and talk with me, I can't think, unless he is watching and listening through a hidden spy-hole. There's sure to be some secret reason in his head, anyhow, a reason that's for his good and not mine. And I shall not be able to get out if you do. If we do, echoed Biddy, a catch in her voice. She glanced furtively at Manny. What had we all been dreaming of when we let this beautiful girl run into danger? I know Biddy well enough to be sure that her thought was, at that instant, for Manny Gilder, not for Bridget O'Brien. But the fear in her heart was vague until the next answer Mabel agreed. An answer that came almost with calmness, for Mabella Hanim's whole being was concentrated upon herself and her own in Broglio. Everything else, everybody else, even those friends who were risking much to help her, were secondary considerations. I don't suppose any real harm will come to you. I don't see how he'd dare. And yet there may be something on foot. Three men had come to-day, one who might be a Draigelman and two Europeans. They came together. I saw them. But I haven't seen them go away. They're in the men's part of the house, the cellar-mleek. They must be with my husband. Perhaps there's only some business about the sugarcane. But did you see the men distinctly? Biddy asked, in a changed tone. Yes, quite distinctly, for they glanced up at the window where I was peeping out. Of course they couldn't see me through the wooden lattice and the bougainvillea, but I had a good look at them. The Draigelmen seemed to have one blind eye. Oh! I hadn't thought of that before. Couldn't it be the man who gave the warning? What were the Europeans like, Biddy questioned, without answering? Were they wearing light-tweed knickerbockers with big checks? No, they were in dark clothes, not very noticeable. Had one a scar on his forehead? Why, yes, I believe he had. The eyes of Bridget and Monnie met. But there was none of that deadly fear in the girls, which Biddy was trying to keep out of hers. Even now it was hardly fear for herself. It was nearly all for Monnie, but Monnie must not know. Just she should lose her nerve when it was needed most. That idea of Bridget's about Monnie being mistaken for Esme O'Brien by members of the organization O'Brien Betrayed had seemed foolish and far-fetched, although Esme was hidden from her father's enemies near Monaco, and it was at Monaco that Miss Gilder and Rachel Guest and Mrs. East had joined Bridget on the Laconia. I had laughed at the suggestion, and Biddy had been half disshamed to make it. But now, in this lonely house where she and the girl had been unexpectedly welcomed, in this house where the master watched, entertaining three strange men, the thought did not appear quite so foolish, quite so far-fetched. Indeed Biddy marveled why it had occurred to none of us that one of the three dangers to be run in rescuing Mabel might come through better, the same danger which had perhaps threatened in the house of the crocodile. Too late to think of this now, the fact remained that we had not thought of it when there was time. Not even Biddy had felt certain that there was a secret motive for taping the girls to the hashish den, or that Biddy had been guilty of anything worse than indiscretion. His warning to Rashid Bey we had put down to a petty desire for revenge, to pay us out for his discharge. Though Biddy had never felt sure of his new employer's German origin, and though she had qualms at the side of the party, following or arriving before us on her pilgrimage through the desert and up the Nile, she had never associated their possible designs with Rashid Bey's grudge against us. Yet how obvious that better should take advantage of it for his client's sake if those two men were what she sometimes feared. Bridget had never spoken out to Manny what was in her mind about Esme O'Brien. She had known that Manny would laugh and perhaps say, what fun! For the girl had invited Biddy to Egypt because she attracted adventures, and because Manny badly needed a few, her life having been, up to the date of starting, a kind of fruit and flower-piece in a neat frame. Now perhaps Manny wouldn't laugh, but it was not the time to speak of new dangers. Well, if your husband thinks that creatures like Better and his Germans are going to help him stop us from getting out, or taking you out, he's wrong, said Manny stoutly. Better's the most sickening coward, as Rachel guessed and I have reason to remember. But I'm glad we know what we have to expect, aren't you, Biddy? It was hard to answer, because the girl was, in reality, so far from knowing what she might have to expect. Bridget tried to smile her reply, as Manny began to tell Mable something of their plan, about the friends ready to rally round them once they were in the carriage waiting outside the gate, and about the motor-coat and veiled hood which had been brought for Mable to put on at a safe distance from the house. You'll have to start in your own things, the girl was saying, otherwise your servants would think it odd. Ring now, dear, for your woman, and have her give you your harbora and yashmuk. There are no bells, said Mabela Hanem, with her soft air of obstinate hopelessness. When I want Yena, if she isn't in the room, I clap my hands as hard as I can. But I can tell you it is no use, it is too late. As she spoke, throwing up her arms and letting them fall with a gesture of hapless despair, both Bridget and Manny felt that Islam had already raised a barrier between them and this delicate creature it had taken into its keeping. In the white wool robe she wore, the kind of loose dressing-gown affected by Turkish women, she looked more like a Circassian than an American girl. Always she had seemed to her would-be rescuers a charming doll, a feminine thing of exactly the type which would appeal to a Turk, weary of dark beauties. Her hair was so very golden, her eyes so very big, and blue, her lashes so very black, her mouth so very red and small, but now she had become an Adelisk. Those friends realized that she would do nothing to save herself. They must do all. Hesitating no longer, Manny struck her hands loudly together. Yena did not come. The girl clapped again and yet again till her palms martyred, but nothing happened. Yena is in it, whatever they mean to do, said Mabel, she's had her orders. Very well then, Manny persisted, her eyes shining and her cheeks carnation, you must go without your wraps. Come along, don't be frightened. Isn't it better to risk something to get away than to stay here all alone when we're gone? The pretty doll, with a little moan, gave herself up to her friends. Bridget, as well as Manny, realized that the moment had come. They must take her while she was in this mood. Let me go ahead, said Manny, in a low, firm voice. You know why. Bridget did know why. Manny had Anthony's browning, and she alone understood the use of it. Yes, she must lead the way, yet Bridget longed to fling herself in front, to make of her body a shield for the tall white girl she had so loved and admired. Biddy put Mabel in front of her, and behind Manny, keeping her between them with two cold but determined little hands on the shrinking shoulders, and so pushing her along protected front and rear in the piteous procession. Of course, if the door leading toward the house entrance had been locked on the outside, there would have been the end of the endeavor. For the moment, but it opened to Manny's hand, and all three went on unchecked, until they came to the vestibule where on the wall bench they had seen the Koran of the fat negro awaiting his return. They had come tiptoeing, and had made no more sound than prowling kittens, yet he sat there facing the door, no longer heavy-litted, a black mountain of lazy flesh, but alert, beady-eyed as if he had been counting the minutes. As they swept through the doorway, hoping to surprise him, the eunuch jumped to his feet as lightly as a man, of half his weight, and smiling with pleasure in the excitement of an event to break monotony, he blocked with his great bulk the aperture between wall and projecting screen. No wonder they had not needed to lock doors with this giant for a jailer, and a big Sudanese knife conspicuously showing in a belt under his open galabia. Rashid had perhaps wanted the white mouse in his trap to feel the thrill of hope, and then the shock of disappointment. He had counted completely on the guardian of his harem. But though he had chosen an American wife, he had not counted on the courage of another type of American girl. The knife looked terrible, but it was sheathed and tucked into a belt. Anthony's browning was in Manny's hand, and hidden only under her surge coat. Out it came with a warning click of the trigger, and with an astonished, frightened gurgle in his throat the negro involuntarily fell back. Run, Manny breathed, prisoning him where he stood with the little bright eye of the browning cocked up at his face. She had to be obeyed then, and they ran, the two of them, flashing past the black man, touching his clothes as they squeezed by, yet he dared not put out a detaining hand. When they were away, safe or not, she could not tell, Manny still kept the pistol in position, but began slowly to turn that she too might pass the dragon, holding him at her mercy till the end. Not a word of Arabic could she recall, but the browning spoke for her, a language understood without the trouble of learning by all the sons of Adam. When she had backed through the doorway, the girl still faced toward the inner vestibule, and it was well she did, for scarcely was she out of his sight before the black giant was after her, taking the chance that she would have turned to run. But there was the resolute young face, with eyes defying his, and there was the weapon ready to blow out such brains as he had, if the hand on the knife moved. Again he fell back, and then Manny did run, making the best use she had ever made of those long limbs which gave her the air of a young Diana. She ran until she had caught up with the other two, flying toward the distant gate, for something told her that the negro would have hurried to tell his master of the trick the woman had played, preferring the lash on his back, perhaps, to a bullet through his head. She was right, no doubt, to trust her instinct, for the eunuch did not pursue, though his tale of failure was not needed. Rashid Bey had been watching from the window of the selen lake, as Mabel his wife had watched when he received visitors. He did not wait for the negro's warning, but dashed out of the house, followed and then passed by several long-robed men in Arab dress. The faces of these were almost hidden by the loose hoods which desert men pull over their heads in a high wind, but had they been uncovered the women would not have seen them. The thing was to escape, not to take note of the pursuers, and it was only Biddy looking over her shoulder for Manny who even saw that they were followed. She cried out to her friend to hurry, that someone was coming, that they must get to the gate or all would be ended. Then, feeling Mabel falter, she held her the more tightly and ran the faster. Rashid and his companions were shouting, not to the women but to the gatekeeper, and as the master's furious voice ring out, just in front of the fugitive, all three together now, appeared the big form of the man at the gate. Manny did not know what to do, for in whichever direction she faced with the browning she could be captured from the other. She might kill the negro and then turn to keep the pursuers back, but the thought of killing a man sickened her. She had meant only to threaten not to take life. Suddenly she felt afraid of the browning. She hesitated in a wild second of confusion, hating herself for failing her friends, yet unable to decide or act. But hardly had the gatekeeper sprung in sight, then he went down, flat on his face, struck in the back of the neck by the shabby fellow who had driven their carriage. Go on, the dirty-faced Arab said in French. There's someone else to drive you. I'll follow. I'm armed. The three sped by him as he stood aside to let them pass, showing to Manny a pistol which matched the one he had lent her. This consoled the girl in obeying, for as Antune had trusted her courage in this adventure, so did she trust his, and his strength and wit against four men or four dozen men if need were. There was the waiting Arbia, and there on the box was a much cleaner, more self-respecting Arab to drive it than the soiled figure which had left the horses and stayed in the garden. Afterwards they learned that the new man was the sister's cousin's uncle of the Hajji's cafe acquaintance. He had been engaged to stroll past in the road, stop, speak, offer the gatekeeper a cigarette, drift into conversation, and be ready to jump onto the box seat the instant Antune left it. His instructions included the furious driving with the three ladies, once they had all bundled into the Arbia to the temple of Mut. Rashid Bey had every right, according to his own point of view, to resent the kidnapping of his wife, and to get her back in any way he could even if blood had to be spilled. But his companions, they who were muffled in the cloaks and hoods to save their faces from the sharp wind, had perhaps not the same right or interest. In any case when they saw that the woman had a man, or men, to help them, and that so helped they had passed from the privacy of the garden to the publicity of the road, the three fell back. Publicity it may be, did not please them, or else, thinking to have only women to deal with, they were not armed and did not like the look of the pistol. Rashid evidently no-coward, or past feeling fear in the rage at the failure of his counter-plot, ran on, wheezing sightly, he was fat for his age, toward the erect Arab in the prostrate negro. Beast, devil, he panted breathlessly, and cried out other words of evil import in both Turkish and Arabic, threatening the silent man of the pistol with death and things even worse. But before he had gone far the hooded men caught up with him, and surrounding urged him back. What they said Anthony could not hear, or what he said in return, but he thought they were proposing some plan which appealed to Rashid's reason, for he showed signs of yielding. There was now no longer anything to detain the protector of the ladies, for by this time he hoped and believed that their Arbiyah must be far on its way toward the Temple of Mut, the meeting-place agreed upon. Accordingly he stepped over the unconscious gatekeeper who lay with his nose in the grass, and backed calmly out of the garden. Not far off an Arbiyah was crawling along the road, so slowly that one might have thought the driver half asleep. But this supposition would have done him an injustice. Dusk had fallen now, the purple dusk which drops like a curtain just after the pageant of sunset has finished, yet the driver was wide awake enough to pierce the purple with a pair of sharp eyes, and recognize a figure expected. He whipped up his horse and the dirty Arab running to meet it, in a few seconds the latter was on the box beside the coachman. Then the Arbiyah turned and dashed wildly off according to the custom of Arbiyah's, back in the direction once it had been crawling. Two dark-faced men in the vehicle talked rapidly in low voices, speaking the language not only of the country, but the patois of Luxor itself. Your brother passed you in his Arbiyah? Yes, Haji, he passed with the three European ladies you told me had been in secret to visit their friend. Then Anthony knew that Brigid and Moni had been able already to carry out their plan of wrapping Mabella Hanim in one of their own cloaks. This was well and would save gossip if the occupants of the Arbiyah were stared at by passers-by, and that the temple also it would be well, for if possible the set were to know nothing now or later of the adventure. But though Anthony was glad of the news he had got from this Arab ordered to meet him at the gate, he did not settle down comfortably and say to himself, Thank goodness the thing is over. Those men back there in the garden would not so easily have persuaded Rashid Bey to let his wife go un-pursued if they had not offered some alternative plan that could be carried out quickly. Still so far so good. Brigid and Moni had won out and secured the prize as Anthony had prophesied that they would do. They were on their way to the temple, where I would be with the comfortable, commonplace crowd from the enchantress Isis, and where the American consul and his wife would just happen also to be wondering. Instead of driving straight there himself, Anthony went with a friend to an obscure, mud-built house in the village. When he came out of that house his brown-stained face was no longer disfigured with dirt. It was immaculate, as noble as the proudest Haji's face should be, and above it was wound the green turban. Ahmed Atun Effendi's own dignified, old-fashioned robes of the Egyptian gentleman flowed around his tall figure when once more he took his place in the waiting-aharbia, this time not on the box seat, and drove off at a more furious speed than ever toward the temple of Mutt. XXIII. The temple of Mutt, I think, must always be mysterious even by day. That night it was more than mysterious. It was sinister. Darkness shut us in among the pillars and the black, lion-faced statues. The least imaginative of my charges seemed to feel the influence of the place. Not an Arab, not even the superior Boat Dregelman would come inside with us, because, after the sun has set, Dithron Sekhet comes into her own again. Strange stories are whispered by Arabs of the temple of Mutt, and of the ghostly golden Dahabia that once a year sails slowly by to a faint sound of music on the sacred lake. We had brought candles with us, protected by smoky glass from the wind that swept down the avenue of broken sphinxes outside, and hissed like angry cats through the dark courts lined with granite statues of the cat goddess. Yet despite the mystery, or because of it, people seemed curiously happy. The spirit of the past, of old Egypt, touched them in the shadowy places of this ruined temple, brushed them with its wings, and whispered half-herd words into their ears. They talked to each other in low tones, as if not to miss the whispers or the soft footfalls of unseen things, and they did not laugh and make jokes or ask silly questions according to their irritating custom. I blessed this mood, for my nerves were jangled, more than ever after the Bronsons unobtrusively appeared, waiting for Bridget and Monnie to come, wondering if they would come or what we should do if they didn't, because suddenly in this place of gloom and eloquent silence all the clever little plans Anthony had I had made in case of accident seemed futile. How could we have let those two walk alone into a trap? I blamed myself, I blamed Anthony, and sometimes I gave the wrong answers to Mrs. East, who walked with me, trying to keep out of the way of the crowd. She was anxious to talk of her niece and to relate how she had been singing my praises to Monnie. You mustn't be discouraged, she said. Never mind about the hieroglyphic letter. Oh, no, you needn't worry. I haven't told her it was yours. Better let her think what she thought at first. Did I tell you what she thought? Please answer me, Lord Ernest. I don't mind your knowing, now, that I believed it was from Antune to me. Believing so did no harm. Why should it, to me or to him? I soon guessed that there was a mistake somewhere when he didn't follow the letter up. I was not offended by the proposal as Monnie would have been. Oh, not if she'd known it was yours, but if she'd supposed Antune was making love to her. Don't you see, you must have seen, you're so quick and observant, that she's been caught by the romance of him, just as she was afraid she might be by some thrilling prince when she came to Egypt. She's miserable. She's hating herself, and you won't save her though I've prepared her mind. So that's what you meant when you hinted that I could spare her humiliation, I said, half in laughter, half in bitterness, suddenly able to concentrate my mind upon the talk. Do you think a man would want a girl to take him for such a reason when she's caring for someone else? But if it would be impossible for her to marry this someone else, why should it be impossible? She would think it impossible. Was she, if—I checked myself, but Mrs. East understood instantly. If he has a secret, she said, then none of us has a right to suggest it to her. Every man for himself, Lord Ernest, in love—Antune Effendi has no reason to feel too kindly to Monnie. You'll be robbing your friend of nothing if you speak to her. If he's in love with anyone, it isn't my niece. At least it's not you—perhaps it's Biddy, after all, my thoughts interpolated. To care for Monnie would be beneath his dignity, considering all that's past. And you can make her happy, as well as yourself, by taking my advice, Mrs. East went on. Aren't you going to be sensible? Just then came a murmur expressing surprise, or some other new emotion, from one of the outer courts where the crowd had wandered, Cleopatra having lured me—yes, lured, is the word, into the sanctuary itself. Something has happened, I said. Let's go back and see what it is. Perhaps Antune has come, Mrs. East caught me up eagerly. She was coming, wasn't he, when he'd finished his business? Or maybe it's only Monnie and Bridget. Only Monnie and Bridget? In the hope of seeing Antune, Cleopatra turned her back upon the dreary sanctuary, not unwillingly, even though the burning question was left unanswered. I hurried her through the dark passages which lay between us and the courts, lighting our way with a glassed-in candle, and it was all I could do not to cry aloud, thank heaven or hurrah or something else that would have opened people's eyes when I saw that indeed Bridget and Monnie had arrived. It was Rachel Guest and Willis Bailey who had hailed them from afar as candle-lights flashed across their faces, and suddenly, to my eyes, the gloomy temples seemed to be brilliantly illuminated. I don't know how exactly I contrived to leave Cleopatra and get to the newcomers, but I did get to them in less than a minute. Perhaps I was a little rude to Mrs. East. I wasn't thinking of that at the time, however, nor of her. I separated the two I wanted from the others. Their faces radiated excitement, but I was not sure if it meant success. I was sure only that they had been through an ordeal and were feeling the reaction. You're safe, I said, and shook hands with them feverishly. Then I shook hands all over again. Safe, yes, Monnie answered, and Mabel, why don't you ask about her? Oh, Lord Ernest, we've done it. We've done it. Thanks to Antune Effendi. We should have failed at the last if it hadn't been for him. Just look over there at the Bronsons and see if you can guess who it is they're talking to. I looked and saw a tall, thin Mr. Bronson and short, plump Mrs. Bronson trying to form a hollow square around a little figure in a long gray coat of bitties and a hood with a veil. I remembered her wearing the day we motored to Heliopolis. It seemed about a hundred years ago. I had conducted so much and so violently since, but I was not too old to remember bitties' hood. What if Neal Sheridan, poking about alone with a candle, could see through that veil? Triumph, I exclaimed, your heroines. I didn't know then how true were my own words. Was it a great adventure? Was it, Bitty, the girl asked, half shyly of her friend? So great that I can't talk about it, Bridget answered, and her eyes implored mine not to ask questions. Also they said that she had things to tell me, now but by and by. Things for me alone. These eyes could be wonderful. Whereas Antonofendi, Manny broke in, when I had taken Bridget's hint, and was beginning to say that we must go and speak to the Bronsons. He hasn't come yet, I answered, and then her eyes, too, began to implore. Not come yet, but it's a long time. We found Mr. and Mrs. Bronson outside, hoping for us to arrive, and we talked to them and introduced Mabel and explained things. They would have liked to go and take her quickly away, but Bitty and I begged them not to. We said it would be better to wait for the rest, and all the crowd to be together in case of trouble. Oh, we discussed everything, for ages, minutes and minutes. I do think Antonofendi ought to be here, unless— I caught her up quickly—unless—well, you see, we left him inside Rashid's gate, where he'd just knocked down a big negro, and was keeping back Rashid and lots of other men, anyhow three with a pistol, not the one he lent me. He told us to go, so we went. He told them to go, so they went. A change, this, for the gilded rose. She spoke at the moment like an obedient little girl. If he told you to go, it was all right, you may be sure, I said encouragingly. But despite my faith in Anthony as a fighting man, I felt, well, somewhat dismayed at the picture called up. Rashid and anyhow three men. It was rather a large order. If with a wish I could have sent every Medver of the set back to their peaceful homes in England and America, and thus rid myself of them in a second, they would have all found themselves walking in at their respective front doors. I wished this wish, but having a mere smoking candle in my hand, and not Aladdin's lamp, it didn't work. There they inconveniently remained in the Temple of Mutt, looking twice as large as life. What if I tell them they've seen everything, I muttered. They haven't, but that's a detail. If I could rush them all back to the boat, and you with them, of course, and get Mabella Hanim and the Bronsons off safely, I could go look for Antoun. Of course we were to wait for him, but I don't like the picture you've painted. Oh, do look for him, broken money. Leave us to care for ourselves. I'm sure we can. There are enough of us, and Mr. Bronson is a consul. Go and get the police. I can't leave you, I said. Antoun would be the last one to forgive me if I did that. But I'll start off the party now. The Arbias and Donkeys are waiting. Listen to the stentorian voice of the conductor announcing. I tried to speak gaily, but the announcement which I opened my mouth to roar through the Temple was never made. There came, instead, at that instant a rival roar from outside. Mine would have been the roar of a sucking dove. This other was a wild bull roar of rage. What it was for, who was making it, and whether it concerned us we did not know, but it was the sound of many voices, and flowed to us on the wind, driving nearer out of distance it was startling and caused the heart to miss a beat. Suddenly the thoughts sprang into my mind that this was like something in a theatre. We were on the stage, in a play of ancient Egypt, and a mob of supers was yelling for our lives in the wings. They would pour out upon the stage and attack us. Only the hero and heroine would be saved. All the villains and other unnecessary people would be polished off. Everybody has stopped talking. Involuntarily, groups drew together. We looked over our smoking candles, past the standing statues and the fallen statues, away toward the columns of the temple entrance. Mr. and Mrs. Bronson and the girl in Biddy's veiled hood and cloak walked across the court and joined our party of three. Neil Sheridan was at a distance. His prophetic soul told him nothing. I hope that fellow Rashid Bey hasn't worked up any trouble against us. The American consul from Asuit said in a low, somewhat worried tone. Instantly I was certain that what he hoped had not happened was indeed the thing that had happened. I seemed to see Rashid stirring up a crowd of his fellow Muslims, telling them that dogs of Christians had robbed him of his foreign wife, who was on the point of accepting Islam. Nothing easier than for Rashid to find us. All Luxor knew we were in the temple of Mut. These men of Luxor and the other Nile towns of Upper Egypt had not yet settled down after the outburst against Christian insults which had alarmed the authorities in Cairo. In three days Anthony Fenton had discovered the dregs at the bottom of the teapot and had doubtless done something toward calming the tempest in it, but the troubled water had not time to cool. It could easily be brought to the boil again and the despoiling of a harem by Europeans. The harem of an important man would be oil thrown into the dying fire under the tempestuous teapot. The furious voices grew louder. From the wave of sound words spattered out and up like a spray. Perhaps in all that astonished crowd gathered in the temple of Mut, Bronson and I were the only ones who knew enough Arabic to catch their meanings. His question was answered, and this was not a stage. Those shouting men were not supers in the wings, they were in earnest. Foolish and dreamlike and utterly unreal as it seemed, their hearts were hot with savage anger against men and women of an alien race, and, though what they might do to us would be visited on their own heads to-morrow, they were not thinking of to-morrow now. As for us, it was just possible that owing to this silly dream we were having about a mob of common, uneducated Arabs, for some of us there might not be any to-morrow. Is there a back door where we can dash out and give them the slip? asked Bronson. I was thinking hard. Man was the responsibility for my charges, these rich, comfortable tourists from London and New York, Birmingham and Manchester, Chicago and St. Louis. None of them yet knew that they were in danger. They were thinking about their dinner and their pleasant, lighted cabins on board the enchantress Isis, waiting for them not far away. They realized that something was the matter out there, that a lot of Arabs were making a row, but it interested and amused them impersonally. If somebody had robbed or murdered somebody else, morally it was a pity, of course, but it added to the picturesqueness of the scene and would be nice to tell about at home. I felt myself overflowing with a sudden new tenderness for the set, so often troublesome. This that was going to happen, unless we could stop it, was in truth the affair of Monty and Bridget, Maybela Hanim and the Bronsons, Anthony Fenton and me, but all would be involved, the innocent with the guilty, unless very quickly the duffer of the company could think of some way out. No, I heard myself say with decision, we mustn't leave the temple, they're superstitious about it. Few, if any, will venture in. What they want is to lure us into the open, and there must be no panic. Certainly my friend, unless he's been hurt, is working for us somewhere. It's only a question of minutes. He borrowed my browning today. I wish, I glanced toward Bridget and Monty. They stood at a little distance with Mrs. Bronson and Maybela, but the faces of both were turned toward us. I saw that they guessed the meaning of the uproar outside. Biddy's great soft eyes spoke to mine, spoke, and told me the truth about myself, how I loved her, Biddy O'Brien, and no one else on earth. How I would die for her, and let all the rest die, if need be, yes, even Monty Gilder, to whom I had been idiot enough to write that letter. If I could save Biddy, what did anything else beside matter? But yes, it did matter. I must save them all, and the light that had lit up my dim soul gave me an inspiration. Because I loved Biddy, I knew what to do. I've got a little surprise for everyone, I yelled, to be heard over the noise outside, where Rashid Bey's mob was now probably trying to make our donkey-boys and Arabia men join in the fight or the siege. Mr. Neal Sheridan will kindly lead the whole party to the sanctuary, which his knowledge of architecture will enable him to find on the axis of the temple. On that passage, please, in fifteen minutes the surprise will be ready, and you will receive the signal to return from Mr. Bronson, American consulate Asuit. No time for introductions now. Sheridan, amazed, but perhaps not displeased, emerged from the dark corner where, until the row began, he had been examining a half erased wall-carving. Come along then, everybody, he shouted good-naturedly, and as the procession formed, discussing the surprise and the noise, now mysteriously linked together in the minds of my charges, I saw the veiled and hooded Mabel shyly try to pull Mrs. Bronson into place with her, as near as possible to Sheridan. She must have suspected that there was trouble brewing and guessed the cause. Her timid, self-centered little soul instinctively sought shelter in the neighborhood of a friend, who would perhaps have been more than a friend if he could. So she followed him, he not knowing what eyes the gray veil hid, but Mrs. Bronson broke away from the small hand, and hurried back to her husband. What am I to do? she asked. Go with the others, he said quietly, take care of the girl. Lord Ernest has some plan. She went reluctantly, but Bridget and Monty and Mrs. East lingered at the tail of the procession, returning to us as the others vanished down the passageway that led toward the sanctuary. I motioned them away, but Monty ran forward while Biddy kept Cleopatra from following. They talked together and argued, Biddy's arm round the taller woman's waist, as Monty came straight to me, and put into my hand Anthony Fenton's pistol. I didn't have to use it, she said, it's all loaded and ready, and I'm going to stay here with you and Mr. Bronson to help. What are you planning to do? Please run away, I said, and take Biddy and your aunt. You must. That's the only help we want. Not till you tell me what you mean to do. Oh, only to try a trip to frighten those Arab sheep out there. This temple at night, anyhow. And I've just remembered that I brought some Bengal fire to light the place up and amuse the crowd. I thought if a red blaze suddenly burst out it would give those fellows a scare, and the police are on the way. But the Arabs will see that you're only two. They shan't see us at all. We'll hide behind those statues and potted them if they do come in, which I doubt. Now off with the three of you, and I was getting my illumination ready. After my surprise and relief, Manny obeyed without further argument. Dimly it passed through my mind that she had been profiting by her lessons lately. I threw one glance over my shoulder, more, I'm afraid, to see whether my dear Bridget were on her way to safety than through anxiety for Miss Gilder. The three figures had already disappeared in the darkness, and Bronson and I gave ourselves to the work of lighting up. An ocean roar of voices surged around the temple entrance now, but the red light flamed like the fires of hell, and I, peeping from behind a statue, revolver in hand, saw that the temple itself had not been invaded. The flare lit the foreground of the darkness outside, and the columns of the front court. I could see a moving throng of black and white clad figures, gesticulating, running to and fro, seeming to urge each other to some action, yet none coming forward. I sprinkled on more powder and up blazed the bangle fire again. Now somebody was taking the lead. A tall man was pushing through the crowd. Would they follow this brave one? My fingers closed round the browning. He was between the columns at last, but the light was dying down. I threw on all I had of the powder and stared through the red dazzle to make certain what was happening, since this might decide our fate. The tall man's back was turned to us. He seemed to be motioning the crowd away instead of urging them on. How to make sure, in the blood-colored glare whether a man's turban was white or green or crimson. But that gesture, that lift of the head. No mistaking that. The man was Antune, Ahmed Antune, the worshipful Haji, high-raining the mob. Hardly would they let him speak at first. Those on the outskirts tried to yell him down. I heard the word traitor, and before the light ebbed I thought I caught sight of Rashid's pale face under the red tarbouche, Rashid's broad shoulders in European coat, edging past Jebes and Galabias toward the columns. Then just as the light died from behind us in the temple came a cry. Above the shouting of the Haji, who was beginning to make himself heard by the crowd, it rang out shrill and clear, a woman's voice, Manny Gilders. She called on the name of Antune, and then was silent. I lifted my candle-lantern, all that was left to illuminate the darkness, and saw at the far end of the court shadowy figures struggling together. It seemed to me that there were not two but four or five. I ran toward them, and Bronson ran, but some one bounded past us both, a tall man and a green turban. A shot was fired after him and hit a statue. I heard subconsciously a miniature crash of chipped granite, but I don't think Anthony heard, or had heard anything since that call for Antune. He had dashed ahead, though we had the start and were running fast. Rounding a group of statues, erect and falling, I saw a candle-lantern on the floor, and knew that Manny, and perhaps Biddy, had not obediently followed the procession to the sanctuary after all. They had waited to watch and listen, hiding behind the black statues of Saquette, and men who had crept in by another way, doubtless by the small Ptolemaic gate opening on the lake, had taken them by surprise. Anthony had got to the shadowy mass, which moved like black wind-bone clouds, vague and shapeless, before Bronson and I were near enough to distinguish one form from another. As for our eyes, his tall figure blended with the waving shadows. Two revolver shots exploded with thunderous reverberations. We did not know if he or another had fired, but almost simultaneously, with the second shot, two black shapes separated themselves from the rest, fleeing into darkness. They took the way by which they must have come, the way leading toward the gate on the lake. Three seconds later we were on the spot, and the only shadows left resolved themselves under my candle-light into the forms of Bridget O'Neill, Manny Gilder, Anthony Fenn, and Mrs. East, somewhat in the background. Manny's hat was off, and Biddy's was apparently hanging by a hat-pin. Their hair was in disorder, a rope of Biddy's falling over one shoulder, a shining braid of Manny's hanging down her back. Biddy seemed to be more or less in the arms of Antune, but only vaguely and by accident. Dimly I gathered that she had stumbled, and that he had saved her from falling. Biddy was fastening up the front of her gray chiffon blouse, which was open and torn. Her hands trembled, and I could see that her breast rose and fell convulsively. For, though the light was dim, I was looking at her, while I merely glanced at the others. Mrs. East was crying, but Bridget and Manny had smiles for Bronson and me as we came blundering along, stumbling over unseen obstacles. Someone stole up behind me with an electric torch and tried to drag me away, said Manny, in a weak little voice, scarcely at all like her own. It sounded as if a ventriloquist were imitating her. Someone called me Esme O'Brien, whispered right in my ear, and I screamed and fought, and Antune came. I think, then, that the man pushed me down as he ran away. Only how I fell, and Antune picked me up. Oh, Biddy, are you safe? Why, your dress is torn. Yes, but I'm safe," answered another small weak voice. I fought, too. I—I think they wanted to rob me. Thank goodness I didn't have it on. The bag, dearest? Yes, darling, the bag. I thought I wouldn't wear it to-day. Out in the night the yells had subsided since the Haji's harangue, if not wholly because of it. The police have come, said Anthony. It occurred to me that Rashid and some friends of his were cooking up a plan, and while I was getting into my clothes in the village it jumped into my head what it might be. So on my way out to the temple I stopped and left a warning. We're all right now, and I don't think the Arab lot would have dared venture in anyhow. These chaps who sneaked in at the back and attacked the ladies were dressed like the rest, but I doubt they were Arabs. He would have doubted still more if he had known all that I knew. One secret I'd kept from him was Bidi's secret. The words Esme O'Brien, whispered to Mane, as yet meant nothing save bewilderment to Fenton. The fifteen minutes are up, and no signal yet for your famous surprise, called out Sir John Biddle's complaining voice from the end of a dark passage. Has anything gone wrong? Oh, I was going to give you a bangle-fire illumination of the temple for a climax, I explained, coming swively forward to meet him with my candle. But the beastly stuff sort of went off by itself and it's all used up. I was, uh, just going to call you. Well, not much harm done, said Sir John. We've seen the sanctuary such as it is. A little disappointing perhaps, especially as Mr. Sheridan found a friend with Mrs. Bronson, the consul's wife, and preferred talking with her to giving out information to us from his stores of knowledge. But luckily not more than twenty minutes wasted. By the way, what's become of the row outside? Used to have fizzled down while we were away, like your red fire. Yes, a great man of some sort was addressing the crowd. But the police came and made it move on. There's been a bit of a negative grumbling in the Nile towns lately. You may have read some paragraphs about it in the Cairo papers, so the police are rather quick to break up meetings. Why should men meet near the temple of Mutt, inquired Sir John? I shouldn't think of doing it. Perhaps in the beginning they hoped to get something out of the Europeans, I said lightly. But they've given that up, evidently. I hope they haven't seduced our donkey boys and our Abiyah drivers, exclaimed Sir John. I'm hungry, and I'm in a hurry to get home. Not they. Donkey boys and our Abiyah men aren't easily seduced when there's a question of Bakshish. They're all right. I'm only sorry about the Bengal fire. Well, it was a good idea, anyhow, Sir John patronized me. Savray! I heard a murmur in his chosen language. The Haji, who has saved the situation, setetuneidtrebiencorunduffer end of chapter 23.