 CHAPTER XI. The house of the crocodile. The letter had evidently been dashed off in a great hurry. It was short and written in French, the language in which Antoine chose to talk with foreigners. Give the bearer two hundred piestras and let him go. Don't try to make him speak, I have promised this. Then quick to Jarvis Pasha and get him to raid the house of the crocodile. Question of hashish. We must be smuggled out when arrests are made, also better to save scandal. Not a word as to whether all were safe or in danger, but I realized that for some reason each instant had been a value, and each instant was a value now. Anthony was one who knew precisely what he wanted and why he wanted it. I obeyed his instructions implicitly. Two hundred piestras went from my pocket into the hand of the withered Arab, and he was allowed to take his departure despite a burst of protest from my companions, who naturally wished the man to be catechized. Once the door had been shut behind his bent blue back, I handed round the letter which had to be translated for Sir Marcus, who professed contempt for foreign gibberish. Jarvis Pasha is at the head of the police, has been for many years, and is the most interesting man in Egypt after the well-beloved Kay. Leaving Sir Marcus to go on with his task of consoling Miss East, I dashed off in my waiting taxi with the newbie in of the silver earrings. We drove to the governorot, a big house in a square near what was once known as the guarded city, the very heart and birth-spot of Cairo. Masriel Cajira, the marshal, founded under the planet Mars. I scribbled a line to Jarvis Pasha and sent it to him in an envelope with my card. This combination opened doors for me, and three minutes later I was shaking hands with a tall, thin, white moustache, hawk-featured Englishman who looked all muscle and bones and brain. Jarvis Pasha, being in the secret of Anthony's identity and business in Cairo, simplified the explanation, and did away with the necessity for a preface. All I had to tell was the brief story of the girl's disappearance with better algemely, and Fenton's following them into space, then how word had come after fourteen hours. The house of the crocodile, Jarvis Pasha said, when he had taken and read the letter, hmm, do you know anything about that house? I know the old stories connected with it, I answered. If its reputation today is as sinister as ever, not at all. Figuratively speaking it has been white-washed. It's become a show-place, a monument historique. This is interesting information which Fenton sends, but if it came from anyone else I should say he had dreamed it. He may be giving us the chance of an important coup. Wait a few minutes and I'll have this thing attended to, Lord Ernest, but you look upset. Is it that you haven't had lunch or are you worrying about the ladies? Both, I answered with a sickly grin. Not that I mind about lunch. I couldn't have eaten if I'd had the time. You haven't as much belief as I have in your friend, remarked Jarvis Pasha, if you think he'd let them come to harm. They're all in the same box, apparently. I excused my lack of faith. Trust Fenton, said the head of police, he was sharp enough to find the needles in the haystack, and he's smart enough and strong enough to take care of them when they're found. On this Jarvis Pasha went out and left me to my reflections, which rushed to the house of the crocodile. Everyone who has read or heard stories of native Cairo knows the house of the crocodile in the street of the sisters, and how, in the later days of Muhammad Ali, people scarcely dared to name it aloud. The tiger, Defardar, Ahmed, built it, for that beautiful Tigris, Princess Zohra, favorite daughter of Muhammad Ali, who married her off to the fierce soldier when she became too troublesome at home. Zohra had loved a young Irish officer who was murdered for her sake, and had no true affection to give Ahmed or any other. She hated all men because of the murderer, her own nephew, and vowed that since her love had cost the life of the one who had her heart, others who dared to love her must pay the same price. When Ahmed died suddenly, soon after the wedding, those who had heard of Zohra's vow, and there were many in the harems, whispered poison. Never again did the Princess drive out to see the women she knew, and those who had been her friends were sent away from the door of the dead Ahmed's palace, over which he had suspended for luck a huge crocodile killed in the far south. But Zohra was beautiful, with strange eyes which drew love whether she asked for it or not, and sometimes a small lattice would open in a bay of one of those windows of wooden lace, whose carving was known as Mishirbiya work, because Shireeb, or Sherbet, used to be placed there to cool. Out of the lattice would look a wonderful face, as thinly veiled as the moon by a mist, and then it would vanish so quickly that a man who saw half believed that he had dreamed. But the eyes of the dream seemed to call and could not be forgotten, any more than the song of a siren can cease to echo in ears which have once heard. After the beginning of Zohra's widowhood, the noblest and handsomest youths of Cairo began mysteriously to disappear. They would be well and happy one day, and the next they would be gone from the places that knew them. By and by their bodies would be found in a canal, always the same canal, near the water gate of the house of the crocodile. Even the vow of the princess was remembered, but there was no English rule in those days, and the police shut their ears and eyes where a daughter of Muhammad Ali was concerned. Mothers and sisters of handsome young men shuddered and begged those they loved never to pass through the dark street of the sisters, Sharia Elbanat, where the crocodile grinned over the door and the vision of a face looked down from a lattice window. The women thought of the water gate at the back of the house. The little children, who had heard secret words spoken, thought of the crocodile and ran crying past the house. But the handsome young men thought only of the face, and each one said to himself, She will not make me pay the price. Still as years went on bodies were seen in the water from time to time, with a tiny purple spot over the heart to show the curious that death had not come from drowning. And some who looked for lost ones could not reclaim them from the canal, for bodies were not always found. As time passed it seemed to people who hurried by the house in the narrow street that the crocodile grew larger and larger. And it was said that it had been fed on the children of men Tiger Ahmed had murdered in Sennar. None dared to say what they believed of Princess Zora, but when, after a long imprisonment by her nephew Abbas in the house of the crocodile, she escaped to Constantinople, nobody would live where she had lived, and the palace fell almost into ruin. This was the story of the house where Monty Gilder and Rachel Guest and Anthony Fenton were now. I had heard it talked about by our Arab servant when I was a child, and had never forgotten, though scarcely since then had I thought of the tale, until the remembered name and the horrors attached jumped into my mind on reading Anthony's letter. What happened in the house of the crocodile since Zora's day I did not know, but because of the old story it seemed more sinister that my friends should appeal for help from that place than from any other in Cairo. I was not left long alone. Five minutes after Jarvis Pasha went out of the room to arrange things according to Fenton's request, he sent me a man with whisky and soda and biscuits. I drank gladly and ate rather than seeming grateful. But there was a lump in my throat which would stick there, I knew, until those three were away from the house of the crocodile. I was still crumbling biscuits when Jarvis Pasha came briskly back. Well, he asked, are you braced up now? If you'd like to be in this business you can. I'm sending a white superintendent with my police to raid the house on the strength of Fenton's letter to you, though until now the place hasn't been suspected. As I said it's been a show-house for some years, ground floor and first story in repair just as in Zora's day, upper floor is ruinous and the public not admitted there. If anything queers going on it must be in the forbidden part and the caretaker is mixed up in the show. A pity you felt bound to let Fenton's messenger off. You can go with my superintendent, Allen, and reach your friends as soon as my men do. Allen has instructions to let Fenton and the ladies, if they're found there, slip away, and it's best for you to be on the spot to stave mistakes and identification. Also I've ordered a closed Arbija to wait for you as near as possible. My men will show you where. You'll know it, for certain, by a red camellia on the Arab driver's European coat. And by the way, take this browning in case of an attack, which I don't anticipate. As Jarvis Pasha spoke, he opened the door and summoned in a brown young Britisher wearing the taboosh which denotes Jippie officialdom. Evidently Allen was prepared for me as I for him, and we started off together on foot, for it seemed that our destination was not far away. We walked swiftly through the crowded musky, once the fashionable part of Cairo before the tide flowed to the modern Ismaela quarter, and after a few intricate turnings plunged into a still twilight region. The streets through which we passed were so narrow and the old houses so far overhung the path that the strip of sky at the top of the dark canyon was a mere line of inlaid blue enamel flecked with gold. The splendid, musher beo-windows thrust out toward each other big and little bays across the ten or twelve feet of distance which parted them as if to whisper secrets, yet the delicate wooden carving skillfully hid all that they wished to hide, and only suggested their secrets. Now we'll soon be coming to the house of the crocodile, said Allen. By Job it's a joke on us and a smart one if it's been turned into a hashish den under our noses. But it must be something new or we should have got into it. The chief thinks already he can guess who's at the bottom of the business and who has put the money up, a certain bay in whose service the caretaker was, a rich old Johnny, very old fashioned, who lives not far off in a beautiful house of the best Kyrene period. He's keen on antiques and has been of service to the government in several ways, though he is a reformed smuggler, and his only son, dead now, was a hopeless hashash, that's what they call slaves of the hashish habit. I suppose you've read all about the hashish chain of the crusaders' days, whom we speak of assassins? Well, ever since then the hashashain have had a bad reputation, but this old man I speak of has been pitied for his son's failings, which he pretends to think a judgment for his own past repented sins. Now, Lord Ernest, saunter please, as if you were a tourist in my charge admiring the old doorways. Two native workmen appeared in front of us, with pickaxes on their shoulders. Stopping they threw down their tools. One produced a cord which he stretched across the street from house to house, and in the middle he hung a small red flag. Then the pair began to pick in a leisurely way at the surface of the road, and before we reached the barrier an Arab policeman stationed himself by the cord. Glancing ahead I saw that the farther end of the narrow lane was blocked in the same manner. This is one trick we have of doing our work quietly, said Allen. It always answers pretty well. I said nothing but used my eyes. Coming from nowhere apparently there were twenty men in the street. A few had crowbars in their hands. Others, native policemen, carried the canes with which they controlled the movements of the people. From the shadowed doorway of large house a native sergeant of police stepped out as we approached and saluted Allen. Over the closed door a large, dryly smiling, ancient crocodile hung. Have our men come and taken their places? asked my companion in Arabic. Yes, offendee, the sergeant answered, all has been done according to order. The back entrance, which was the water gate before the old canal was filled up, is surrounded, and the adjoining houses with which some communication may have been established are watched. Not a rat could have crawled out since we came, nor could one have gone in. Today is the feast of a saint, and these people have their excuse not to open the house to visitors, for so it is with other showplaces. Look, it is written up that until tomorrow there is no admission. As the man pointed to a card hanging from a hook, he and Allen smiled at the cleverness of this pretext for closing the door. In English, French, and Arabic the reason was announced in neat print. Probably this was not the first time the same excuse had been used in the same way. They must have taken alarm at something, and thought they were being watched, Allen said to me. That's why they have sported their oak. I expect we shall make a haul, as, for everybody's sake concerned, they wouldn't dare let their clients out, to fall into a trap. Yes, that's why, or else he stopped, and I did not ask him to go on, for I knew that to ask would be useless. Yet I guessed what he had meant to say and why he had stopped. He didn't wish to alarm me, but it was in his mind that the house had been closed because of something planned to happen inside. And that something might be connected with my friends. We should soon know. My first thought was that we were to get through the door by breaking it in, or by forcing those on the other side to open for us. In an instant, however, I realized that my idea was absurd. It would take an hour to batter down that thick slab of old cedarwood, and Allen had said that he wanted to do things quietly. No, the brown sergeant was not here to open the door, but to see that it did not open unless for our benefit. Two of Allen's men were unfolding a curious ladder like a lattice, which they made secure with screws when they had stretched it to full length. Then up it went to one of the beautiful Mushurbia windows which, on the level of the story above the ground floor, bade graciously overhanging the street. One man standing below held the ladder firmly in place, while another, small and lith as a monkey and enjoying the task as a monkey-mide, ran up to the top that leaned against the window. Evidently he was a skilled worker, for before I knew what he would be at he had, with some small, sharp instrument prized out without breaking it, one of the sections of carved lattice. This he tossed lightly down to a man who caught it, and as he and four others after him slipped through the opening the sergeant knocked on the closed door under the swinging form of the crocodile. Nobody answered, but three minutes passed and then suddenly there was the sound of a falling bar and a very old, very dark man with a white turban and a white beard peeped out. Thieves, he cried in Arabic, thieves break in at the window. He was making the best of a bad business, I guessed, and hoped somehow to justify himself to the police. But though he was gray with fright he forgot to look surprised. My Arabic was not equal to the strain of catching all the gavel that followed, the old man protesting that it was right to close the house today, but if it were the police and not thieves who broke in it was unjust, it was cruel, and his son Mansour the caretaker would appeal to all the powers. Before he had come to the end of his first breath he was hushed and handcuffed, and hustled away, and another man sprang forward from behind the angle of a screen wall inside the entrance. He was young and looked strong and fierce as an angry giant, but at sight of Alan and the rest of us he stopped as if we had shot him. Perhaps he had not expected so many. In any case, he saw that there was nothing he could hope to gain by violence or bluster. All he could do was to protest as his father had done that this visit was a violation of his right to close the house on a holiday. Don't be a fool, Mansour, said Alan, who evidently knew him. You understand very well that isn't why we are here. You've got a hashish done upstairs above the public showrooms. A nice trick you thought you'd played us, but you see you didn't bring it off. By this time we were inside the house, having thrust the caretaker in again, and passing the three torturous screen walls of the entrance into a courtyard. Several young Arabs dressed as servants stood there, large eyed, and stricken at sight of their giant master held by four policemen. But there was not a sign of our men who had crawled through the window, and I was impatient to go where they had gone. There was no sound of scuffling, no sound at all, except the crying of some startled doves, and Mansour's voice, swearing by the Prophet's sacred beard that if anything were wrong he was not the one to blame. There were those above him who must be obeyed, or he and all that were his would be put out of life, but I cared too little for him or what might become of him and his to listen much. I looked up and saw at the left of the courtyard, with its several closed doors, a short flight of steps with a mounting block and a doorway leading to a winding staircase. Round the court went a gallery, supported with old marble pillars, and underneath on one side was a large recess, the taktabosh, raised slightly above the level of the courtyard, and having a row of wooden benches round its three walls. Here the caretaker and his male relatives and friends had evidently been smoking their narguilas and drinking coffee. Our arrival had disturbed them in the midst. Suddenly into the frightened morning of the doves broke a sharp sound of cracking wood. Come along, cried Allen, there will be past the barrier in a minute, and leaving Mansour and the others to be dealt with by subordinates he led the way up the steep stairs at a run. We did not stop at the first story, the show part of the house of the crocodile, but catching a glimpse of a lattice to balcony off the landing, all lovely Musher Beowork, and a great room of Persian tiled walls and colored marble floor beyond, we dashed up another flight of stairs to the story above. These stairs were of common wood and somewhat out of repair. At the top was a door of carved cedar wood like those below, but rough in execution, faded, and with here and there a star-point or triangle of the pattern missing, leaving a hole in the thick wood. On this door was nailed a large card with the notice written English, French, and Arabic, forbidden to the public. What a grand idea to install a hashish den here, I could not help thinking, as I followed at Allen's heels to the head of the stairs, where two of his men worked with crowbars to prize open that theatrically dilapidated door. Behind the pair who worked there were the others who had entered by the window below, and hardly had we taken our places in the strange queue, when with a loud groan the door gave way. The couple in front almost fell into a dark passage on the other side, and my heart leaped, for I half expected to see them driven back upon us by an attack with knives or pistols. But the dim vista seemed to hold only silence and emptiness as I peered over men's shoulders, and as we crowded in, Allen pushing ahead to take the lead, nothing stirred. The passage was but a gallery, like that below, but instead of being open it was closed in with lattice of musher be a work, so that, though those within could look through, it was a secret for those outside, as if it had been enclosed by a solid wall. The darkness was patterned with light, like ebony thinly inlaid with gold, for the afternoon sunlight trickled into the delicate loopholes of the carvings, and we began to see what enterprise had been made of this ruinous upper story. The floor had been dilapidated and unsafe, but new boards had been placed over it, covered with Egyptian made matting and rugs to deaden sound and give an appearance of comfort. We walked quickly along to the end where this closed gallery turned at right angles, and there found another door, new and rough evidently but lately put up. It was not so strong as the old one, and it yielded in a few minutes to the furious industry of our men with their crowbars. They lifted the door from its broken hinges, leaning it against a wall, and as we passed through an Arab pulled aside a thick curtain which filled in a doorway. He was evidently a servant, and seeing the police showed no sign of surprise, but only of a most humble resignation which disclaimed responsibility and begged for mercy. In silence the man was taken into custody, and Alan and I, with three of the four policemen, passed into the region behind the portiere. There, all was dusk, save for the faint light sifting down from a carved wooden dome in the ceiling, partly curtained, and a dark lantern flashed out along revealing ray. The men ran to pull back heavy cloth hangings which entirely covered the lattice windows, and would allow lamps to be lit at night without being seen from the street or courtyard. The sun-shine pierced the carved interstices and let us see what enterprise had done for his clients. We were in the anti-chamber of a long, beautiful room. The old, colored marble of the derka, the lower level of floor nearest the entrance, had been repaired with new. The dilapidations of a fountain were almost hidden by pink azaleas in pots. The liwan on the next level had a good rug or two, and the diwan at the farthest and highest end was furnished with red-covered mattresses and pillows. The low wall benches of marble were set here and there with glass bowls of roses and syringia, and tiny cedarwood cupboards high in the tiled walls were opened to show coffee-cups, tobacco jars, and pipes made of coconut shells with long stems of cane. Four men who had apparently been lying on the mattresses stood up and faced us, not fiercely, but with something of the attendance resignation. Two were in European clothes with the inevitable tarbouche, and two equally well-dressed were old-fashioned and picturesque in the long, silk gown and turban-style, which Antoon and other lovers of the ancient ways affected. They were of the effendi class and might be merchants or professional persons. A turbaned man with a black beard, Alan knew, and greeted in Arabic, who's sane effendi? Who would have thought to see you here? Why not? answered the other, with a melancholy smile and a shrug of the shoulders. There is no harm, really, but only in the eyes of the English. We are caught, and we cannot complain, for we have had true delight, and we have known, since the alarm came last night, that we may have to pay for our pleasure. So you had the alarm last night? said Alan, looking as if there were nothing surprising or puzzling in that. Yes, why should not we admit it now? Word came that a watch had been set outside, both back and front, and none of us dared to leave the house. We consented to be locked in, though there is one in another room who wished to get out and run the risk. That was not permitted for the sake of others, and to prevent him from taking his own way in spite of prudence. We let ourselves be shut in, with only one attendant who took through the holes in the door such little food as we needed. We had begun to hope that it had been a false alarm, or, since no inquiries seemed to have been made below, that the watchers had gone and would not come again. We planned, as soon as night fell, to go to our homes, but it was not to be. And if any are to blame, it is not those who come to take pleasures provided for them, but rather they who cheat the coastguard of the swift-running camels and bring what is forbidden into Egypt. The blame will be rightfully apportioned, said Alan. Meanwhile I am sorry to say, Hussein Effendi, that you and those in your company are subject to the law. I must leave you now, and go farther to see what others we will have to deal with. The four Effendi's were politely left in charge of two policemen who would have been equal to twice their number, and our one remaining man went on with Alan and me. Your friends and perhaps two or three who can afford to pay big prices will have had their smoke in private rooms, Alan explained. We can guess who it was who wanted to break out. There are probably no more doors, only curtains, so we shall have no trouble. But don't forget that if anything unexpected should happen you have a pistol. Of course you understand that it could be used only in an extreme case. A curtain doorway led out from the diwan into a small ante-room, and there on the floor set better, al-Gamali, the picture of dejection. Had I raised my voice in the next room he would perhaps have ventured in to see what I could do to help him. For now, at sight of me, he scrambled up in shame-faced eagerness. Oh, my lordship, he began to cackle. Praise be to Allah, you are come. I was persuaded to bring the young ladies here. They would make me do it. Yes, sir, it is not my fault. They pay me. I have to obey. Then we get caught like we was some rats. No fair to punish me. The ladies all right. No harm come except a little sick. If no harm has come, that's not due to you, but to a very different man as you well know, I said, and as I spoke the man I had in my mind appeared before my eyes. Hello, I exclaimed joyously. Anthony's eyes and Alan's met, but I could not tell if they knew each other nor could I ask then. It was enough for Alan in any case, however, that this magnificent haji was one of the friends for whom I searched. He turned to better. You brought two ladies here, I understand, he said quickly and sharply. Then you must have acquaintance with the place. For good reasons which have nothing to do with you, I shall not arrest you, but you will have to report at the Governor-Rot inside the hour or you will regret it. Do you know the way out the back of the house? I do, gracious one, better responded with a business-like promptness. Then take these gentlemen and the ladies whom I do not need to see out by that door, and you will all be allowed to go, because my men who are there have seen Lord Ernest Borough, and they have my instructions. We waited for no more, but followed Anthony, who made a dash through the further room and into another. There on a mattress crouched two forlorn figures, veiled as if in haste, and muffled in black satin haberas such as Turkish ladies wear in the street. Lord Ernest, oh, how glad I am, cried one of these creatures, while the other, less vital or more miserable, whimpered and gurgled a little behind her veil. Come along quick, I said, and they came. Better led the way, thankful to show himself of use. Anthony followed as if to protect or screen the girls from sight. I brought up the rear, and so, scuttling through a rabbit-worn of little unfurnished dilapidated rooms, we found a narrow side staircase and tumbled down it anyhow in dust and dimness. Then two more staircases, and we were in a cellar which looked as if it might once have been used as a prison. Up again and rattling at a chained door. Then out into light and air, into the midst of a group for which an instant closed threateningly around us. But the sergeant I had seen was among the alert brown men. A glance, a gesture, and we were allowed to pass, a youth running with us to show us the promised carriage and the Arab driver with the red chameleon. So it was over, this adventure. Yet was it over? That remained to be seen, and remained also to see what it meant, if indeed there were a meaning underneath the surface. CHAPTER XII. It seems too good to be true that it should end like this, said Manny. She set it on the roof of Mina House, in the kiosk room made of Mr. Biowork, which I had engaged for a little private dinner-party that night. You see, it was the night of the full moon, the magic night of the Sphinx spell, which must not be wasted, no matter how tired you may be or how many excitements you may have lived through. Anthony and I had had our explanations. He had told me that one night in a cafe where he was spreading news of his dream he heard two men talking in low voices about the house of the crocodile. The word hashish had not been mentioned, but Anthony had imbibed a vague impression of something secret, and had wondered and had been interested. Then the matter had slipped his mind, but summoned in the night from the writing of letters to advise Mrs. Jones, he had recalled Manny's wish to visit a hashish den. He knew of none but suspected the existence of one or two. How to find out in a hurry, he had asked himself. And with that the remembrance of those few whispered words in the cafe had come echoing back to him. He acted upon the suggestion, went to the door of the swinging crocodile, knocked, and knocked again, had the door open to him as if in surprise by an apparently sleepy man. Announced the motive of his coming as if it were a foregone conclusion that hashish could be smoked in the house by the initiated. His disguise was not suspected. It never was when he played the Egyptian, and when they asked who had sent him, he had the inspiration to utter the name of that bay who had been Mansour's master. This gave him entrance. He was taken upstairs, passed through the door forbidden to the public, and the first person he saw in the long room as he entered was Better smoking a goza. One of those coconut, cane-stemmed pipes in which hashish is mingled with the Persian tobacco called Tumbak. Better was accused of treachery and defended himself. The ladies had insisted. It was his place to obey. He had done no wrong in engaging a carriage to wait outside the Ghazira palace gardens and bringing his employers to the best place in Cairo for the hashish smoking. The ladies were safe and happy in a private room where they had tried their little experiment, and now they were sleeping. As soon as they waked and felt like going home, he was ready to take them. It was for Miss Gilder, not for Better, to beg pardon of her friends if they were frightened. And all the time it had seemed to Anthony that the man was expecting someone to arrive. He watched the doorway half eagerly, half anxiously. When a servant came or went, he started and betrayed a motion which might have been disappointment or relief. But when Anthony questioned him, he said, I expect no one, if any. It is only that I shall not be easy till we get the ladies home. Now you tell me there people are alarmed. Just then, and before Anthony saw the girls, a servant had come running in to say that there was an alarm. Something had happened in the street and the police were there. Mansour feared that it was a ruse and that the house was being watched back and front. But the forbidden thing is, no precaution can be too great. For their own sakes and Mansour's sake, no one must go out, perhaps not until the next night. But luckily a saint's day would give peace for the morrow and all doors could be shut without causing remark. The news that there was no escape for many hours to come distressed no one, apparently, except Antune. He had gone to the door and had tried to open it, but found that already it was locked on the other side. Then he knew that it was useless to struggle, for he was unarmed, the door was thick, and no one outside could hear if he shouted. He must use his wits, but first he must make sure that the two girls were safe. He forced, rather than induced, better to show him the room they had engaged. A small one closed only with a portiere and, looking over the court, down into the open-fronted recess where Mansour's family life went on, like a watch-dogs in his kennel. It was true, as Better had said, the girls slept on a cushioned mattress, wrapped in black caberas, their faces turned to the wall. As they could not be taken out, Antune did not wake them, but let them get, in peace, their money's worth of dreaming. His next thought was to try and bribe the Arab attendant to smuggle out a letter, but acceptable as a bribe would have been the man explained his helplessness to earn it, at least for the time being. He could do nothing till one of his fellow servants came up from below to pass food for the imprisoned smokers through a hole in the door, made purposely in case of just such an emergency. Probably no one would appear till morning, for who would be hungry before then? Even with the morning it might be Mansour himself who would bring the food and inquire again at the door if all were well within. But if the noble haji wrote the letter it should be sent when opportunity arose. One of the servants below stairs said the man was his father, who might, during the next day, be able to slip out as if on some errand. Then he would perhaps take a letter if he could be sure of good pay, and that he would not be delivered up to the police. So Antune had written on a sheet torn from his notebook, and had made an envelope of another sheet. The address of the Ghazira Palace had helped the man to believe that no evil would reach his father, and a sweetener in the shape of all Antune's ready money had done the rest. But evidently the old man had not succeeded in finding an excuse for an errand until after the noon hour, and, meanwhile, time had seemed long in the house of the crocodile. When the girls waked wanting to go home they were ill. They found the game not worth the candle, but Antune's presence had given them comfort. They were humble and remorseful, and better was so conspicuously a worm that Monnie consented to his discharge. It would take more time than we've got to make him worth converting, she said to Rachel, when the Arminian had carefully laid all the blame of the expedition upon her shoulders. Never were two runaway children more glad to be found and restored to their anxious relatives than Monnie Gilder and Rachel Guest. As for better he took his dismissal with a week's wages submissively, but the gravest question concerning him still lacked an answer. Had he merely been officious and indiscreet in guiding the girls secretly to the house of the crocodile, and there procuring hashish to buy them dreams, or had he wanted something to happen in that house which had not happened? A certain amount of brow-beating for Antune and bullying for me dragged nothing out of him, and perhaps there was nothing to be dragged. Perhaps it was through oversensitiveness that Bridget and I dwelt suspiciously upon better's motives, and asked each other who it was that he had expected at the house of the crocodile. Even Anthony did not accuse the Arminian of anything worse than slinus and cowardice. According to him the two worst vices of a man, but he volunteered to find out what mysterious night disturbance in the street had caused the sudden closing of the doors. It was Biddy's thought that the person better wished to meet might fortunately have been prevented by this very disturbance from keeping his appointment, and Monnie saved a serious ending to her adventure. It began to seem rather a worry, traveling with so important a young woman as Miss Gilder, and a vague dread of the future hung over me as it hung over Bridget who loved the girl. We felt dimly as if we had a warning, and did not yet know how to profit by it. The atmosphere was charged with electricity as before an earthquake, and we felt that the affair of the hashish den might be but a preface to some chapter yet unwritten. Still it was impossible not to forgive Monnie her indiscretion. Indeed, she became so honey-sweet and childlike in her desire to make up for what we had suffered that the difficulty was not to like her better. She besought us to forget the episode. If we only knew how sick she and Rachel had been, we'd see why they never wanted to think of those hours again. And when I chanced to mention that tonight would be full moon, the night of the nights when the sphinx and the Giza pyramids held their court, Monnie begged to have the bad taste of her naughtiness taken out of her mouth by a dinner at Mina House. We might dine early and plunge into the desert later when the moon was high. Of course I propose that all should be my guests, all except Antoon, who, though recognized as a gentleman of Egypt, was considered by Miss Gilder and Alien, not exactly on dining terms. He was supposed to go home to his own address. At eight thirty he was to take a taxi to Mina House, where he would arrive before nine, in time to help me organize my expedition. I explained to Monnie that, though we should dine privately, it would be my duty to see that the Candace people paid their respects to the sphinx, and gazed upon her as she ate moon-honey. If they missed this sight, or if anything went wrong with their way of seeing it, I should never be forgiven. But the must-chastened Monnie graciously did not mind. She thought it would be fun to watch the sheep-dog rounding up his flock. Useless to explain to her the subtle social distinction between a flock and a set, both with capitals. To her the blaze of the set's smartness was but the flicker of a penny-dip. We could drive the crowd on ahead and look at our moon when they were out of its light. So there's the explanation of Monnie's presence in the Musherbia kiosk on the roof of Mina House, on the night following the great adventure which would have put most girls to bed with nervous prostration. Part of our program, to be sure, had failed, but it was not a part which could interfere with my selfish enjoyment. Mrs. East had changed her mind at the last moment, and had decided not to dine, although I had invited Sir Marcus on purpose for her. According to Biddy, Cleopatra had something up her sleeve, something her excusive seediness was meant to cover. Maybe it was only a flirtatious wish to disappoint Sir Marcus. Maybe it was something more subtle. But it did not much matter to anybody except Lark, who was obliged to put up with Mrs. Jones in place of Mrs. East, for Rachel Guest and the sculptor, whom we nicknamed Bill Bailey, were to be paired off, and, urged by Biddy, I intended to monopolize Monnie. I suppose there could scarcely be a more ideal room for an intimate dinner-party on a moonlight night than that kiosk on the flat roof of Mina House. Through the wide open doors and the open walls like a canopy of black lace lined with silver, the moonlight filtered, sketching exquisite designs upon the white floor and bringing out jeweled flecks of color on the covering and cushions of the devans. There was no electricity in this kiosk, and we aided the moonlight only with red-shaded candles and ruby-domed fairy lamps, the exact shade of the crimson ramblers which decorated the table. For the corners by the open doors I had ordered pots of Madonna lilies, which gave up their perfume to the room, and looked in the mingling radiance of rose and silver like hovering doves. Oh, I could hug and kiss that moon, sighed Monnie, tall and fair in her white dress as the lilies I had chosen for her. I was relieved that the man in the moon has now been superseded by a Gibson girl, for Monnie was beautiful at that moment as a vision met in the secret garden which lies on the other side of sleep. And the stars, Monnie said, as I watched her uplifted face, wondering just how much I was in love with it, the little stars high up at the zenith twinkle like silver bees, those that sit on the edge of the horizon are huge and golden, like desert watch-fires. Oh, do you know, Lord Ernest, if quite a dull, uninteresting man, or—or one that it would be madness to even think of—proposed to me on such a night I should have to say yes. It would seem so prosaic and such a waste of moonlight not to. Wouldn't you feel like that if you were a girl? I'm sure I should, I replied with extraordinary sympathy. I do feel like it, even as a man. I warn you not to propose, or I shall snap at you. She laughed, but I was wondering if I were dull and uninteresting enough to stand a chance. It seemed as if Providence were actually handing it to me. But just then Biddy and Sir Marcus came to the doorway which had so becomingly framed Monnie's form and mine. Naturally that put the idea out of my head, and two such opportunities don't come to a man in a single night. Dinner was not ready yet, and we sauntered about on the flat roof, white as marble in the moonlight. The sky was milk, the desert honey, far off Cairo with its crowned citadel, pale opal veined with light, and faintly streaked with misty greens and purples. The cultivated land a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel, in its ancient beginnings the Palace of Apasha, was like a closely huddled group of chalets, looked down on from its central roof. On the fringe of the oasis garden the cafes and curiosity shops buzzed with life, and glittered like lighted beehives. Outside the gateway, donkey boys and camelmen and drivers of sand carts chattered. Tonight, and on a few moonlight nights to come, they would reap their monthly harvest. They were all ready to start off anywhere at a moment's notice, but apart from them and their clamor reposed a row of camels previously engaged, free therefore to enjoy themselves until after dinner. As we gazed down as if from a captive balloon at the line of sitting forms they looked immense, like giant newborn birds, with their huge, edged-shaped bodies and thin necks. Along the arbor road from Cairo flashed motor-car after motor-car, their lights winking in and out between the dark trees, now blazing, now invisible, their occupants all intent on doing the right thing, dining at Mina House and seeing the full moon feed honey to the sphinx. Some, wishing to save time or to dine later in town or to take a train for somewhere later, did not turn in at the Hotel Gate, but swept past with shyron shrieks and toron hoping to rush the steep hill to the pyramid platform at top speed. Only a few of the strongest succeeded, and, with a dash instead of an ignomious crawl, triumphantly fanned their lights along the base of that vast monument, in which King Keops vainly sought eternal privacy. What would he say, we wondered, could he see the crowds of tourists tearing out to pay him a call on their way to the sphinx? Would he blight them with a curse, or would he remember pearly nights of old, when his subjects assembled in multitudes for the Feast of the Goddess Neath, when the moon was full, and the white, brightly painted houses along the Nile reflected their flower-like illuminations in the water? Anyhow, as Sir John Biddle would have said, this was helping to keep his name before the public, and nothing could succeed in vulgarizing his mountain of gold in its gleaming waves of desert, under pulsing stars and creamy floods of moonlight. Anthony had told me that the great tip was to go out while the less instructed sightseers ate their dinner. Then the desert was comparatively empty, and more important still, instead of having the moon on her head and her face in shadow, the sphinx received its full blaze in her far-seeing eyes. Of this advice I meant to avail myself, feeling vaguely guilty as I thought of the giver, who was absent from the Feast. Anthony Fenton, one of the finest young soldiers in Egypt, who could be lionized in drawing-rooms at home if he would stand for it. Anthony, who, would he would accept the repentance overtures of that tyrannical old pritz, his maternal grandfather, might inherit a fortune and a palace at Constantinople? Yet as Ahmed Attoun and his green turban he was taboo at our little party. He was due later, however, and I rather expected to find him waiting below when I excused myself to descend to the set. But I had not left the roof when a note for Manny was brought up by an ebony person in livery. I watched her as she read, one side of her face turned to marble by the moon, the other stained rose by the red-shaded candles. I thought that the rosy side grew more rosy as she finished the letter. There's a message for you, Lord Ernest, she said. Aunt Clara wants me to tell you that Antoun can't meet you at the hotel because she changed her mind about not coming out and sent for him. She felt better, it seems, and got thinking what a pity it would be to miss the full moon. So she suddenly remembered that Antoun wasn't with us, and decided to invite him. She writes in a hurry and didn't know where they would dine, but says anyhow they'll meet us by the Sphinx between nine and ten. Where they'd dine, echoed Sir Marcus, pricked to interest. Was she going to let Fen—I mean Antoun take her out to dinner? Apparently she was, replied Manny, rather dryly. Why not, asked Bridget. He's perfectly splendid. And Mrs. East, not that she isn't a young woman, of course, is old enough to go out without a chaperone. If we're to meet them between nine and ten at the Sphinx, said Manny briskly, don't you think, Lord Ernest, you'd better hurry and get your people off, so we can set out ourselves? I'm going, I assured her, but I thought we'd plan to give them a long start in hopes that they might be ready to come back by the time we arrived. Oh, well, she said, that will make it very late, won't it, and we may miss Aunt Clara. Anyhow, lots of other creatures, just as bad as yours, will be there, for we can't engage the desert like a private sitting-room. That settled it. I dashed downstairs and sorted out my charges. They had got themselves up in all kinds of costumes for this act. One man had on a folding opera hat, which he had thought just the right thing for Egypt, as it was so easy to pack. Girls in evening dress, men young and old in helmets and straw hats, ancient maidens and fat married ladies in dust cloaks or ball gowns, climbed or leaped or scrambled onto camels with shrieks of joy or moans of horror, or else they tumbled onto donkeys which bounded away before the riders were well on their backs. And men, women, and animals were shouting, giggling, groaning, gabbing, snarling, and squeaking, an extraordinary procession to pay honor to the pyramids and the lonely Sphinx. We of the Roof Party considered ourselves, figuratively speaking, far above camels, far above donkeys and scornful of motor-cars, in which it was irreverent to charge up to the Great Pyramid as if to the door of a café. We walked, and Moni still lent herself to me, but she no longer bubbled over with delight at everything. A subdued mood was upon her, and her eyes looked sad, even anxious, in the translucent light which was not so much like earthly moonlight as the beginning of sunrise in some far magic dreamland. She had the pathetic air of a spoiled child who begins suddenly, if only vaguely, to realize it cannot have everything it wants in the world. And she merely smiled when I told her how, to ensure the peace of the desert, I had offered a prize of a large blue scarab as big as a paperweight, for that member of the set who did not even say oh to the Sphinx. Antoon had vetted the alleged scarab and pronounced it a modern forgery, but nobody else knew that, and as a prize it was popular. The sky had that clear pale blue of dawn when day first realizes that, though born of night, it is no longer night. Cassiopeia's chair and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like gold and furniture out of a house on fire, and one great star jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was serious, the lucky star sacred to Isis and Hathor, but Moni's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when Ramesses' daughter found Moses in the bulruses of Rhoda Island. The stars spoke to us as we walked, soft-footed through the sand, and the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the language of the universe and nature. Here and there yellow lights in a distant camp flashed out like fireflies. Far away across the billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an unseen shore. Now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of the shadow might have been the white woman who haunts the sphinx, hurrying to a fatal tryst, and the great pyramid seemed to float between desert sand and cloudless sky like the golden palace of Aladdin being transported through the air by the genie of the lamp. There never was such gold as this gold of sand and pyramids under the moon. We said that it was like condensed sun rays, so vivid, so bright, that the moon could not steal its color. Cloud-like white figures were running up Khufu's geometric mountain, Arabs expecting money when they should come leaping down, whole or in pieces. And the khaki uniforms of British soldiers, mounting or descending for their own stolid amusement, made the pyramid itself seem to be writhing, so like was the color of the cloth to that of the stone. No use being angry because the monument was crawling with Tommy's. The pyramids were as much theirs as ours. And probably Napoleon soldiers spent their moonlit evenings in the same way, a thought which somehow made the things seem less intolerable. We climbed to the vast platform of the Giza pyramids and then plunged into the billows of the desert in quest of the sphinx. Sir Marcus was entitled to call himself the pioneer, but we needed no one to show us the way. It was but too clearly indicated by the bands of pilgrims going or returning. And among the latter were those who Manny callously referred to as poor earnest's crowd. Miss Hassett Bean and the Biddle Girls made us linger, with sand trickling over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their impressions of the sphinx. Miss H.B. thought that she, with a capital S, was a combination of goddess, prophetess, and mystery. Enid thought she was like an Irish washerwoman making a face, and Elaine said she was the image of their bulldog at home. Manny, after a sandy introduction, listened to these verbal vandalisms in horrified silence. I could see that she was exerting herself, for my sake, to be civil to my charges, who were more interested in her than they had been in the sphinx. But if she could have done so without hurting their feelings, she would have struck them dead. But my fears that their mental suggestions might obsess her were baseless. She did not speak when the golden billows parted to give us a first vision of the great mystery of the desert. I had led Manny by a roundabout way, and instead of seeing the sphinx from the back, we came upon her face to face, as she gazed with her wonderful, all-knowing eyes, straight into that world beyond knowledge, which lies somewhere east of the moon. Veiled by the night in silver and blue, with a proud lift of the head, she faced past and future, which were one for her, and the present nothing. The moon gave back for a few hours all her lost loveliness, of which men had robbed her, seeming miraculously to restore the broken features, whole and beautiful as they had been in her youth before history began. It was as if in the moon's rays were silver hands, mending the marred majesty, giving life to the eyes and to the haunting, secret smile. I thought of the story of King Harmakas, how he dreamed that the sphinx came to life, saying that the sand pressed upon her and she could not breathe. Nobody since his day had for long left her buried. What does it mean to you, I broke the silence to ask? I don't know, Manny said. All I know is that she's more wonderful than I expected, and as beautiful as the loveliest marble venus of Italy, though a thousand times greater, if one perfect thing can be greater than another. She's so great that I don't think she can be meant to be a woman, or even a man. She is like a soul carved in stone. All in a moment you have guessed the riddle, I explained, liking and understanding the girl better than I had liked or understood her yet. I believe that's the secret of the sphinx. The king who had this stupendous idea and caused it to be carried out said to some inspired sculptor, make for me from the rock of the desert a portrait, not of me as I am seen by men in my mortal part or cut, for that can be placed elsewhere, but an image of my real self, my soul or ca, looking past the small things of this world into eternity, which lies beyond this desert and all deserts. Then the sculptor made the sphinx and gave it such grandeur, such mystery of countenance, that extinctively the souls of people recognized the soul look. You have a soul, and it told you the secret. Only those who have no souls find the sphinx heavy or hideous or utterly beyond their comprehension. Have I a soul? Manny asked, dreamily. Men I've known have told me I haven't, yet sometimes I've felt fluttering, and if I have a soul I shall find it in Egypt. Oh, I shall. Saying yes, the sphinx herself tells me that. I was tempted to ask, what about a heart, and then in a violent hurry before anybody came to mention my own, into which the moon seemed pouring a little of the honey it had brought for the sphinx. I did feel that someone owed a moonlight proposal under the sphinx's nose, or the place where its nose had been, to such a girl as Manny. Her Egyptian experience could never be perfect and complete unless she were proposed to, on the night of the full moon, with the sphinx's blessing, and as no better man was here to do it, I could not be thought conceited if I took the duty upon myself. Besides, Bridget would so thoroughly approve. Look here, Biddy. I mean Manny. I began hastily. There's something I want to tell you, something very important you ought to know, because matters can't go on much longer as they are. Is it something about Antunes, she broke in with a little gasp, as I paused for breath and courage? If it is, maybe I know it already. Extraordinary the relief I felt. I ought to have suffered a shock of disappointment, because I couldn't possibly finish a proposal after such an interruption. But instead my spirits went up with a bound. Probably, however, that was because her hint was a whip to my curiosity. What do you know about Antunes, I asked. Perhaps I forgot to lower my voice, or perhaps voices carry far across desert spaces as across water. Anyhow, the clear tones of Cleopatra answered like an echo. Antunes, Antunes, I hear Lord Ernest calling. Biddy, dear little matchmaking Biddy, had managed Sir Marcus, Bill Bailey, and Rachel, as a circus-writer manages three spirited white horses at one time. The desert was her ring, and she had reigned her steeds to her will, keeping them out of my way and monies at all costs, no matter whether they saw the sphinx in back view or nozeless profile. But Mrs. East's principal occupation in life was not to get me engaged to the gilded roads, and either she lost her presence of mind or else she was not so much enjoying her moonlight terrattette with Fenton, that it was worthwhile to hide from us behind a sand dune. The two emerged from a gulf shadow, Anthony very splendid under the moon, a true man of the desert. I thought I heard Manny dry in a sharp little breath as she saw that noble incarnation of Egypt, so he must have seemed unless she knew the British reality of him walking beside Cleopatra. Then came up the others, Sir Marcus, impossible to restrain, and we all talk together as people are expected to talk when they have come thousands of miles to see these monuments of Egypt. Yes, yes, wonderful, incredible. Which do you find more impressive, the sphinx or the pyramids? Isn't it a pity that they let the temple between the paws remain buried, and aren't the pyramids just like titanic golden beehives, and can't you simply see the swarming builders like bees themselves working for twenty years? Thus we jabbered, and others, many others, appeared to dispute the scene with us, to break the magic of the moonlight, and to puncture the vast silence of the desert with their cooings and gurglings and chatterings in German, English, Arabic, and every other language known since the Tower of Babel. Arab guides lit up the sphinx with flaring magnesium and impertinence that should have made hideous with hate, the insulted features, but instead turned them for a thrilling instant of suspense into marble. Indeed none of our petty vulgarities could jar or even fret the majestic calm of the desert and the stone mystery among its billows. The sphinx gazed above and passed us all. She was like some royal captive surrounded by a rabble mob, yet as undisturbed in soul as though her puny hooting tormentors had no existence. It was not so much that she scorned us as that she did not know we were there. When we sorted ourselves out to escape Sir Marcus, Cleopatra deigned to make use of me, having first observed with burning interest that Manny and Rachel were with Bailey, and that Antune was pointing things out to Brigitte O'Brien as its Mons metier in pictures and advertisements to point things out to women. It's been a wonderful evening, Mrs. East said. It has made up for everything I suffered last night. We brought dinner out into the desert in that smallest tea-basket, you know, and ate it together, he and I, Antune and I. There I may as well confess that's what I called him to myself, for I've guessed your secret and his. But don't be afraid, I won't tell a soul. It's too romantic and fascinating for words, or to put into words. Let me have my fortune told by an Arab sand-diviner, who came while we were at dinner. I can't repeat to you what the fortune-teller said, but I feel as if I were living in a book. Oh, if only I were writing it myself and could make everything happen just as I wanted to happen. Do you know one thing I would put into the story? No, I can't think, I said rather anxiously. I would have you proposed to Manny. Oh, by Joe, Mrs. East. Why, don't you admire her? But of course, she's irresistible. Only she's so horribly rich. And besides, she doesn't think of me in that way. You can't be sure. Now, Lord Ernest, I'm going to whisper you a secret. I believe I really do that Manny would be glad if you'd propose. If I were in your place, if I liked her, I would do so as soon as possible. It might save her from humiliation, from a great trouble. Being a duffer, I could only say once again, by Joe. CHAPTER XIII I didn't sleep much that night for thinking of Manny, and when I did sleep I dreamed of her, tangled dreams in which she was Manny Gilder with Bridget O'Brien's eyes. Could it be possible that she liked me? Mrs. East ought to know. I made up my mind that tomorrow I would begin by feeling my way, but when tomorrow came I had no time to feel anything which concerned my private affairs. It seemed, or so I was told, for my own good, by Miss Hassett Bean, that the Candice people thought it snobby for me to have indulged in a private dinner-party, and to have hustled them off in a drove to the Sphinx while I went leisurely with my smart friends. They knew all about the feast on the roof, and were of opinion that they ought to have been there. Did I consider my American heiress better than they, better even than the family of an ex-Lord Mayor? If I wish to make up lost ground I must devote myself to duty, and be nicer than ever to everybody. This was one of the moments when I was tempted to throw over my job, but I remembered the reward and set myself once more to the earning of it. For the next few days I scarcely saw Manny or Bridget, or even heard what was happening to them, for they had done the principal sights of Cairo, and I, as the head of the Candice crowd, was doing them. As if in a game of follow my leader I led the band from mosque to mosque, not indeed visiting the whole two hundred and sixty-four, but calling on the best ones. To begin with I collected the set on the height of the Citadel, which commands all Cairo, the platform of the pyramids, not only the Giza pyramids, but the sixty odd others, which newcomers don't talk about, the Tawny Makatum Hills, and the silver-blue serpent of the Nile. From this vantage-place I pointed out the things which we had to see in the city spread out below us, so that on the vaguest minds the picture might be painted in its entirety before they began to absorb details on that mosaic map which was Cairo. The tombs of the Mamluks strangely shaped monuments, vague and white as squatting ghosts, the graves of the Caliphs, the historic gates of El Carrera, and the many ancient mosques whose minarets soared against the blue, like tall-stemmed flowers in a palace garden. Mentally fortified by this bird's-eye view from the Citadel, of course I had to chop them up again for the sunset, my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money's worth of Egypt, were unable to enjoy any sight in their nervous dread of missing some other spectacle which some people at home might ask them about. These strained their wearied intelligences to see more than they possibly could at any one moment, unless they had eyes all around their heads, and others of an even more irritating type never lifted the few eyes they had from the pages of guide-books. I liked better those who, like Mani, frankly said they didn't wish to have their minds tidied up, and be told a string of things about Egypt. They just wanted to feel the things, and let them slowly soak in. And the nice, lazy southern Americans who said that they were tomb shy, and loitered about, bedding from one to six scarabs on the speed of fleas, or donkeys, while I whipped forth for their tired companions a dull drove of fax, fattened for their benefit. Mosques and churches and tombs had to be visited, but did not appeal to all tastes. The bazaars did. So did the zoo, more fascinating than any other zoo, because each animal has its trick, or pet, or plaything. As an excuse to see Mani and the rest of my friends, I got up a moonlight-digging expedition at Fustat, those great mounds of rubbish and buried treasure near Egyptian Babylon where a city was burnt lest it should fall into the hands of the crusaders. Mani and her party were invited to join us and accepted the invitation, piloted by Antoun. And concerning this entertainment I had an idea. Those who chose to dig among these desert-like sandhills between the Coptic churches of Babylon and the tombs of the Mamluks may chance upon something of value, especially after a windstorm or a landslip. Bits of Persian pottery, fragments of iridescent glass, broken bracelets of enamel, opaline beads, or tiny gods and goddesses. Why should I not, thought I, a portion off to each member of the band his or her own digging-patch. This would save squabbling and would provide an opportunity for me to propose in a unique way to Mani. Regarding the idea as an inspiration I carried it out scientifically. Helped by Anthony, after the sun had set and the mounds were deserted, I staked out the most promising claims, and marked each space with the name of the miner for whom I intended it. In Mani's patch, near the surface where she could not possibly miss it, I buried a letter wrapped round a cow-eared head of Hathor, which I had bought at the Egyptian Museum shop. Now, in justice to myself, I must tell you that this letter was no common letter, such as any Tom, Dick, or Harry might write to the Mary Jane Smith of the moment. It was a missive which cost me midnight electricity and brain-strain, for not only must I appeal to my lady, I must also suit an environment. Mani had taken up the study of hieroglyphics in order to appreciate intelligently the tombs and temples of the Nile. She had bought books and was learning with the energy of a stenographer to read and write. She wrote out exercises and submitted them for correction to Antune, who, as an Egyptian, was to be considered an authority. Of course, she explained to me, one comes here thinking that all Egyptians nowadays, even cops, are Arabs. But he says that Egyptians are as Egyptian as they ever were, because Arab invasion has left little more trace in their blood than the Romans left in the blood of the English. It interests me much more to feel when I'm in Egypt than I'm among real Egyptians. With this in my mind I was convinced that a love letter in hieroglyphics unearthed by moonlight in the mounds of Fustat would please Mani. The difficulty was that, though I could speak Arabic fairly well, I hardly knew the difference between hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demonic forms. But the limited symbols I was able to employ were so strong in themselves that a few words would go a long way. And if they were not as correct as the sentiments they expressed, Mani was not herself a mistress of hieroglyphic style. I could find no hieroglyphic suit in which to clothe the name earnest. But since I had become a keeper of men, mice, and mortals, and Sir Marcus Lark's floating zoo, Mani's craze for Egyptianizing everything had suggested the nickname of Men Keeper Ra. She sometimes called me Ra for short. Therefore I now venture to divert to my own uses a sign and cartouche once the property of a son of the sun, and king of Egypt. TRANSLATION Beautiful queen, star of my heart and soul, give me your love, become my wife and goddess for eternity. Men Keeper Ca Ra. I padded myself on the back, put the letter in the ground, and the digging-party was a wild success. But time passed on and I had no answer. What I expected was a reply in kind, and hieratic acceptance or a demonic refusal, either one would be good practice for Mani. But not a hieroglyph of any description came. I had to go on as if nothing had happened. To be ignored was less tolerable than being refused. This silence began to get on my nerves, and to make matters worse, there was that desert trip hanging over my head. I knew even less about organizing a desert trip than I knew about hieroglyphics, yet it had to be done. As Sir Marcus said it was up to me to do it so well that Cook would look sick, Anthony was absorbed in secret official duties and open, unofficial duties. His was a great thinking part, and our occupations kept us apart rather than brought us together. On the one occasion when we were alone he devoted four out of five minutes to telling me what he had learned of the night disturbance in front of the house of the crocodile. A Britisher of sorts had come into the street, guided by an Arab. There had been some dispute about payment, and the Britisher had slapped the Dregelman's face. This had been followed, as he might have known it would, with a stab. A crowd had assembled and scattered before the police. The stabbed one had gone to the hospital, the stabber to prison. Although it was not surprising then Monsour the suspicious caretaker had feared a trap and closed his doors, better Elgemeli, now one of the great unemployed, had been seen near the hospital where the injured man lay, but he had taken the alarm and departed without inquiring for the invalid's health, or else his being in that neighborhood was a coincidence. The name of the man knifed was Burke, and London was given as his address. He was between thirty-five and forty, and according to the arrested Dregelman was not a gentleman but a tourist. His hurt was not severe, and as the Arab had been exasperated by a blow, the punishment would not be excessive. When at length I had seized the last remaining minute to put the question, do you think Miss Gilder has found out who you really are? Fenton seemed astonished. I hadn't thought of it at all, he answered simply. She's giving me too many other things to think of. What kind of things, I stealthily inquired. Oh, with an evasive air, I don't know what to make of her yet. But I haven't given up my silly scheme. What silly scheme? Antoin looked almost soky. Well, if you've forgotten, I won't remind you. It's absurd, it's even brutal, and I'm ashamed of it. But I stick to it. End of CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. PART I. Of it happened in Egypt. This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org. It happened in Egypt by Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson. CHAPTER XIV. THE DESERT DIARY BEGIN PART I. I found out why Manny paid no attention to my buried letter, but the way in which I found it out and several other things at the same time is part of the desert trip. I am not a man whose soul turns to diaries for consolation, but I did keep up a bowing acquaintance with his notebook in Egypt. It helped me with my lectures, and in the desert it relieved my feelings. Looking over the desert pages I am tempted to give them as they stand. BLACK FRIDAY. MORNING. The starts for Monday and nothing done. Could I develop symptoms of creeping paralysis and throw the responsibility on Anthony? But too late for that now, and he may have to stay in Cairo for a day or two. Why did I leave my peaceful home? It's the lure of the mountain of the golden pyramid. Last night before I went to bed, read over my copy of Fellini's letters, to gain courage. Gained it for a little, but when I think of that desert I am supposed to turn into a happy playground for trippers, and not a tent hired or a prune bought or an egg laid for all I know, I wish Anthony and I had let Lark stick to our mountain. This is all Lark's fault, anyhow. He sprang the thing on me. But it would be as easy as falling off a log, said Cairo was full of Arabs whose mission in life was supplying tents and utensils for desert tours. People would be charmed with simple life, and me as universal provider. All I had to do was to supply cheap additions of the Garden of Avala, and plenty of dates, and hint that it was considered vulgar in the best circles to put on Peshmelba heirs in the desert. With a few quotations I should make them content with a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, and thingam-bob. Why they'd be falling in love with each other under the desert stars, and my principal occupation would be saying, Bless you, my children. Sounded neat, and I remembered that, according to Bridget, Manny wanted the desert to take her. Thought it might be useful if I were in on the act. Abysmal beast of a dragoon who lurks round Mina House, buoyed me up with false hopes. Said he had a fine outfit which he let, and threw himself in his guide. Plenty of everything, including cheek for fifteen people, the exact number who have put down their names to go. Some girls and parents are staying for a ball at the Semi-Ramis, where I've tearfully persuaded the only soft-hearted officers I know to dance with them, otherwise the lot would have been on my hands in the desert. Had so much to do yesterday, taking the crowd to Mataria, where the holy family hid in a hollow tree, that I had no time to look at the Arab's outfit. Pots inclined to save trouble and trust him, but saw Anthony a minute last night, and he urged me to inspect everything. Did so early this morning. Rotten outfit, tents like old patchwork quilts, pots and pans, etc., probably bought job lot from Noah when the ark was docked. Those keenest on desert taking them will be mad as hatters if it takes them in. Suppose I'll have to interview half the Arabs in Cairo today. Suppose I had a ca, or ba, or whatever you get for an astral body in Egypt, and I could say to it, Here, my dear chap, I trust you to do this job while I stay in Cairo and rest my features. Then he'd get the blame, and I'd disappear. Never to be seen again. Or if he were a ca, with cook accomplishments, maybe he'd bring off the thing all right, in which case I ought to turn up and take the credit and marry Mani. Happy thought. Cook. Why shouldn't I sneak to cook and inquire in a careless way if they publish any pamphlet on how to do a desert tour? Later have been to cook. No pamphlet but a friend in need. Talk of casting bread on the waters. In Rome I cast a crust which I didn't want, and it's come back in Cairo with butter and sugar on it. Must have been two years ago in Rome when a young chap wrote to me to the Embassy. Said he'd been disappointed in getting work he'd come abroad for, had seen my name, recognized it, was from my country, and could I use him as a stenographer or anything? I couldn't, but found him someone who could, and forgot him till I saw him this morning, a fully fledged clerk at Cook's. Checking the impulse to fall on his neatly striped blue and white bosom, I invited him to lunch, and as a reward for what he calls past and present favors, he had given me a new life. What I mean to say is he's promised to provide me not only with tents, but camels and camel-boys and a camp-chef, and waders and wash-bowls and a desert drageman, and thousands of things I'd never thought of. It seems practically certain that since Napoleon no genius has been born as slainy. Cleopatra would say that slainy is the reincarnation of Napoleon, but neither Cleopatra nor anyone else, above all Sir Marcus Lark, is to know of his existence. Such is the disinterested self-sacrifice of this buttered and sugared crust, that it will do everything for me while keeping itself and the organization which controls it completely in the background. The organization is too great to mind, and the crust, alias T. slainy, thinks itself too small. Lark Limited considers himself a budding rival of the firm of Cook, but a deadly bud. If, however, Sir M. should come to hear that I had flown for succor to the enemy's camp, I fear it would be all over with the bargain for which Anthony and I are selling our souls. T. slainy says he never shall know. He guarantees that Cook labels and other tell-tale marks shall be removed from everything, though time is short and there is much to do. He will be the power behind the tents, and I will be in them, absorbing all the credit. Saturday, all color de rose, thanks to slainy, should like to get him canonized. Many less worthy men, now deceased, have been given the right to put saint before their names. He has handed me a list, something less than a mile long, of articles which Biddy and I, as children, used to call E.D.s and drinkies. He has told me where the things can be bought, and has written a letter of introduction which secures me highest consideration and lowest prices. Also he has suggested a medicine-chest, packs of cards, the newest games, cigarettes suited to European and Arab tastes, picture-postcards of desert scenes, ink, pens, and writing paper. People forget everything they want on these trips, but you mustn't, said he, I have acted on all his suggestions and feel as proud as if I had originated them myself. My precious friend slainy has made a large collection of Arabs, camels, tents, etc., and ordered everything, animate and inanimate, to assemble in the neighborhood of Mina House this afternoon, in order to be inspected by me, and to be ready for a start early tomorrow morning. We are to have a sand cart with a desert horse for Cleopatra, who has tried a camel and found it wanting. I fancy she thinks a sand cart the best modern substitute for a chariot, and at worst it ought to be as comfortable. Many has promised a yellow one, cart, not horse. The horse, by request, is to be white. The other ladies are having camels. I dare not think of Miss Hassett Bean at the end of the week. The men also will camel. There is indeed no alternative between cameling and sand carting, sand carting not recommended by the faculty, but insisted upon by Cleopatra. Hope it will work out all right, and I am inclined to be optimistic. A week in the desert and the flowery oasis of the Fayoum, with the two most charming women in Egypt. There will be others, but there is a man each, and more. I shall have to look after Manny and Bridget as Anthony is having his hands full with Cleopatra lately, and besides he can't start with us. Something keeps him in Cairo for two days more, and he will have to join us near Tomeya. Sunday evening, back from Great Pyramid, where I went to inspect the assembling army. Magnificent is the only word. The camels find animals, but Anthony has promised the three best, borrowing these aristocrats of the camel world from Major Gunter of the Coast Guard. They have chased hashish smugglers, and have seen desert finding. Were snarling horribly when I was introduced, but a snarl as superior to the common snarls of baggage camels as their legs are superior in shape. Biddy, Manny, Mrs. East and Rachel Guest were there with Sir M. and Antoon, having been inside the Pyramid and up to the top. Manny on her high horse, because Antoon says it will be better for the ladies to ride in the baggage camels. The others take his word, meekly, but she persists, and Anthony agrees to give her the camel he had meant to ride, the one supposed to be the most spirited. When he joins us he will have the animal intended for her. When this bargain was struck between them I thought his eyes looked dangerous, but she didn't notice or didn't care. Fenton tells me he has dreamed again of the red-faced man with a purple mustache. I laughed at his bugbear and flung Colonel Corcoran in his teeth. By the way, nothing has been heard of sea by any of us since the day he handed in his resignation. Suppose he has gone back to England in the sulks. Monday night. I am riding in my tent, which is to be shared with Anthony when he arrives. I feel years older than when we started this morning. Middle age seems to have overtaken me. If I keep on at this rate shall be a centenarian by the time we get back to Cairo. We made a splendid caravan at the start. Besides the train of camels ridden by my party from the Candice and Monnie Gilder with her satellites, it goes against the grain, though, to call a bright, particular star like Biddy a satellite. There were over thirty gigantic beasts laden with our numerous bedroom, kitchen, luncheon, and dinner tents, tent pegs, cooking stove, food for humans, fodder for animals, casks of water, mattresses, folding beds, other tent furniture, tourist luggage, and so on. I was happy till after the baggage train had got away each camel with its head roped to the tail of the one ahead, all trailing off toward the distant pyramids of Socarro well in advance of us. Each camel looked like a house moving. On top of the kitchen camel's load was perched the chef, a singularly withered old gentleman with black and blue complexion clad in a vague flying blanket. Has been Turkish coffee-men in Paris hotels. Many other negroid persons in white with large turbans, a few cafe au lait Arabs, these all counted before slainy for me and identified as assistant cooks, waiters, bed-makers, and camelmen, enough apparently to stock a village. We had one surprise at the moment of starting in the form of a bright black child, clad in white, with a white skull cap and a flat profile evidently copied from the Sphinx. I don't know yet why this baby Sphinx has come, or who he is, but he rode on the kitchen camel's tail, hanging on by the bread, our bread, which was in a bag. When this cavalcade had wound away, the camel's making blue heart-shaped tracks in the yellow sand it was our turn to start. Not one of us would have changed places with any old Egyptian king or queen, and we did not feel vulgar for doing this trip in luxury, because ancient royalties had done the same, and so do the great shakes of the desert even now. As I put Cleopatra into the sand-cart with its broad, iron-drimmed wheels, she was recalling the days when she traveled with a train of asses in order to have milk for her bath. I suggested a modern condensed substitute, but the offer was not received in the spirit with which it was made. Now to get the ladies on their camels, after which we men would vault upon our animals and wind away among billowing dunes full of shadowy ripples and highlights, like cream-colored velvet. But just here arose the first small cloud in the blue. It was bigger than a man's hand, for it was the exact size and shape of Miss Hassett Bean's hat. It was a largest hat of imitation Panama trimmed with green veiling, just the hat for a postcard desert all pink sunset and no wind. As she was about to mount the squatting camel, a breeze blew the flap over her eyes. This prevented Miss H.B. from seeing that the camel had turned its neck to look at her, and so as she reached the saddle and the hat blew up, Lady and camel met face to face. It was a moment of suspense, for neither liked the other at first sight. Then the camel began to gurgle its throat in a threatening manner and at the same time to rise. Miss Hassett Bean, staring into two quivering nostrils shaped like badly-made purses, shrieked, forgot whether she must first bend forward or bend back, bent in the way she ought not to have bent, and fell upon the sand. I don't quite see why I was to blame for this result, but she saw and said I ought to have warned her what a vile creature a camel was. Nothing would induce her to try again. She would go to any extreme rather than to ride a beast with a snake for a neck, and a nasty, unsympathetic face full of green juice which it spit out at you. She was used to being liked. She simply couldn't go about on a thing which would never love her, and she wouldn't want it to if it did. She would go home or else she would have a sand cart. All the neighboring sand carts were engaged, but fortunately Antoine Effendi appeared at that instant. He'd taxied out to see us off, and he persuaded Cleopatra to let Miss Hassett Bean drive with her. The desert horse, feeling this extra weight, looked round almost as unsympathetically as the camel had, but nobody paid the slightest attention except his attendant, who was to lead him, a type of negro nut who had a snobbish habit of reddening his nails with henna. By this time a crowd had assembled, kept in check by the tall, blue-robed shake of the pyramids. It consisted mostly of Arabs determined to take our photographs or sell us scarabs, which Miss Hassett Bean refused on the ground that she disliked things off dead people. But on the fringe lurked a few Europeans, amused to see so large a caravan setting forth, and the men of our party, hitherto proud of their curtained helmets and desert get-up, became self-conscious under a fire of snapshots. Hello, my boy scout! I was hailed by Sir Marcus, arriving three minutes behind Antony and on the same errand. This blow to my self-esteem fell as I was leading Monty to the white camel which was hers and should have been Antony's. She laughed. I suppose she couldn't help it. I couldn't myself if it had been Harry Snell or Bill Bailey, but as it was my pride of khaki helmet, knickers, and putties collapsed like a burst balloon. I seemed to feel the calves of my legs wither. It was in this mood that I had to put Monty on that coastguard camel while Antoon stood looking on. He did not offer to help the girl as their talk yesterday on the subject of baggage camels versus running camels had not conduced to officiousness. Monty was in white, broad white helmets such as women wear, white suede shoes, white silk stockings, and a lot of lacy garden-party things that showed frills when she flew, bird-like, onto the cushioned saddle. That's the way to do it, I heard her cry, exultantly. And what happened next, I can't say, for the white camel knocked me over as it bounded up, jerking its nose-rope from the leader's hand, and the next thing I knew it was making for the horizon. I hadn't been on a camel since I was four, if then so it was useless to follow. But while I stood spitting out sand, Antony flung himself on one of the swift coastguard beasts, and was after her like a streak of four-legged lightning. None of us had the nerve to continue our operations until, a quarter of an hour later, they appeared from behind the great pyramid, coming at a walk, Antoon holding the bridle of Monty's hand. I saw by Fenton's face that he intended to make no suggestions, and I guessed that he was practicing his chosen method. If Miss Gilder wished for anything she must ask for it, and ask for it humbly if she expected to get it. Her face, too, was a study. She was pale and even piteous. I thought there were tears in the blue-gray eyes, and if I had been Antony I could not have hardened my heart. Pride or no pride I should have begged her to abandon this praiseworthy adventure, and dame to mount the baggage brute. Not so, Anthony. He led back the camel, with Monty Limpley sitting on it, and when it had calmed down at sight of its friends he retired into the background. How wonderful that you kept on, darling, exclaimed Biddy. I didn't, said Monty. Then she turned to Antoon, who remained on his beast, in case of another emergency, or because he did not wish to be looked down upon by her. He was rather glorious and throned on his camel, the only one of our party who was truly in the desert picture. I didn't blame him for stomping up there on his sheepskin, eye to eye with the girl. For a moment Monty did not speak. She was evidently hesitating what to do, but common sense and natural sweetness got the better of false pride. Antoon you were right, and I was wrong, she admitted. I said yesterday that you were selfish, keeping the coastguard camels for yourself and Lord Ernest and General Harlow, and giving us women the baggage ones. Now I'm sorry. I was silly and hateful. I wouldn't ride another fifty yards on this demon for fifty thousand dollars. He's nearly broken my back, and if it hadn't been for you he would quite have done it. Please help me off and put me on any old baggage thing that nobody else wants. Anthony's eyes lit for an instant, from satisfaction as a man, or from Christian joy in her moral improvement. He sprang off his skyscraping camel, brought Monty's animal to its knees, helped her off, and motioned to the Arab attendant of the ugly duckling of all the other creatures. It gave the effect of being a cross between a camel and an ostrich, and had been chosen by Antoon as his own mount, when he surrendered the aristocrat to Monty. Oh, dearest, I can't have you ride that grasshopper, cried Bitty. Antoon took it for himself very kindly because it's the worst, and I don't care any more than he did. Give the thing to me and take my one, that deer creature with the blue bead necklace. But Anthony answered for Monty. Mademoiselle Gilder made a bargain with me yesterday, he said, if she failed in what she wished to do, she was to do what I wanted her to do. I think she will wish to keep her bargain. I'm sure I wished to, added Monty. With a chastened, not to say shattered, air, she curled herself up on the sheepskin-covered cushion which was the ugly duckling saddle. This time it was Antoon who settled her into place, with her feet meekly crossed, and the caricature of a camel rose like a sofa at a spiritualistic seance. Strange to say, however, when all were ready to start, Monty appeared more comfortably lodged than any of the camel-riding ladies, and the thought entered my mind that perhaps Anthony had, with extreme subtlety, taken this roundabout way of benefitting Miss Gilder. After this we got off with only a few minor mishaps. The one remaining incident of note was the arrival on the scene, as we left it, of another caravan, a small caravan consisting of two Europeans, a few laden camels and camel-boys marshaled by one Dregelman. The Dregelman was better al-Gamali, and he smiled at us affectionately, as though we had not driven him from us in disgrace. How forgiving Arabs are even when they're not converted, remarked Rachel Guest, by whose side I happen to be writing. He isn't an Arab, I said, he's an Armenian, and both are supposed to be the reverse of forgiving. But he's found another job quickly, so he can afford to let bygones be bygones. Oh, he would, anyway, Miss Guest exclaimed, warmly. Poor fellow, you've all done him a great injustice, but I'm thankful he's not going to suffer for it. I wonder if he and his people are bound the same way we are. I feared that this was likely to be the case, as we were going the conventional round, sticking, as one might say, to suburban desert on our way to the Fayyum. But as Mani observed the other night we couldn't engage the desert like a private sitting-room. I would, however, have preferred sharing it with most people rather than better and his clients, though the two latter looked singularly harmless, almost Germanic. We went on more or less happily, though I noticed that whenever a camel changed its walk for a trot, each one of the ladies reached back a desperate hand to clutch the saddle and save her spine from the bruising bump-bump which smote the bone with every step. As for me, that feeling of middle age began to creep on while my coastguard camel and I were getting acquainted. I tried to distract my thoughts from the end of my spine by concentrating them in admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemn tea to the moonlight. There far away to the left the spire-crowned citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets and the long serrated line of the micatum hills were carved against the sky in the yellow rows of pink topaz. Shaffs of light gave to jagged shapes and terraces of rock on the low mountains and appearance of temples and palaces, very noble and splendid as must have been the first glimpse of ancient Egypt to desert-worn fugitives from famine in Palestine. Between us and the Nile, hiding the sparkling water as we rode, went a dark line of palms, purple, with a glimpse of peacock feather green in the distance. Hundreds of tiny birds flew up into the burning blue like a black spray, and the sand was patterned by their feet, in designs intricate as lace. Wherever lay a patch of white and yellow flowers, or of rough grass no bigger than a prayer-rug, a lark soared from a snest singing its jewel-song, and here and there a gentle hoopoo reared the crown which rewarded it for guiding lost King Solomon and his starving army to safety. CHAPTER XIV. THE DESERT DIARY BEGIN PART II All this was beautiful, but I wondered painfully if Manny could be happy in spite of the bumps, now that the desert was taking her. Strange how a disagreeable sensation constantly repeated at the end of a mere bone can change a man's outlook on life. If Manny had come to my camel-side and whispered, I found your buried letter, O men-keeper-rah! Behold that bird now flying toward you! It is my Ba, my heart or soul-bird, carrying the gift of my love. I should with difficulty have prevented myself from snapping out. This very much, but my good girl, I am in no mood to talk tommy-rocked. It was sympathy, kind, friendly sympathy I yearned for, not spoken in words, but given from soft, sweet eyes, as little bitty had given it when I tore my hands and barked my shins' birds-nesting on the rocks a hundred years ago. I think we should have liked the excuse to stop and gaze at the ruinous pyramids of Abusir, but the Dregelman guide supplied by Slaney urged us on to the great plateau of the pyramids and necropolis of Saqqara. There on the terrace of Mariette's house we saw a crowd of Cook's tourists from Bedrashayn, and I had some moments of guilty fear lest my secret should leak out, as their Dregelman rushed down and warmly greeted ours. But in the throes of rolling off their camels for the first time, the ever-waitful suspicions of the set were submerged under physical emotions. It's an ill camel that bumps no one any good. I was only too glad to lure my charges away from the danger-zone, and luckily it was so early that the influential ones, who never lunched until two at home, gave the word tooms before food. Girting up its aching loins, the procession allowed itself to be led by me in my Dregelman down inclined plains into dark, mysterious warm passages where our lights were wandering red stars. Now and then a face would start suddenly out of the gloom, payload with candle-light, and in this way vitties flashed upon me, starry-eyed. Oh, I'm glad to see you, she whispered. Bedr and his two tourists are here. I'm afraid. My dear child, I said soothingly, but not as soothingly as if I hadn't had a toothache in the spine. You may be afraid of Bedr, but hardly of two stout Germans in Czech suits. Not if they are Germans, but are they? Just now one of their candles almost collided with mine, and his eyes stared so. Then they looked over my head at Manny, who was behind me, and where she is now heaven knows. Nothing can happen to either of you here, I assured her, and probably our fuss about Bedr is much ado about nothing. We have no evidence. The man who stared at me over his candle has a scar on his forehead, said Biddy. Maybe he got it in that row in front of the house of the crocodile. Maybe he is Burke, and has just come out of the hospital. Most likely he is Schmidt, and adorned himself with a wound in a student duel, said I. It's too fresh-looking. He must be over thirty, she objected, but at that moment Miss Hassett Bean loomed into sight, and in the stuffy atmosphere of the tomb felt the need of my arm to keep her from fainting. We did the pyramid of Unas, dilapidated without, secretively beautiful within. We went from tomb to tomb, lingering long in the labyrinthine mansion of Mararuka, who, ruddy and large as life, stepped hospitably down in statue form from his Stella recess, to welcome us in the name of himself and wife. Almost he seemed to wave his hands and say, Look at these nice pictures of me and my family and our ways of life painted on the walls, our servants, our dwarves, our mountain banks and acrobats, our flocks and herds. Sorry, there's no refreshment at present on my alabaster mostaba, or table of offerings, but you see I didn't prepare for visitors outside my own immediate circle of cause and buzz. Still, as you have come, make yourselves at home and take pot luck. I think when you've examined everything you'll admit that you haven't a soul-house in Europe to touch mine, which if I do say it is the best thing this side of thieves. Next came the tomb of tea, but by this time mural representations of fish, flesh and fruit began to be aggravating. It would be past two before we could reach our lunch entent, and somehow it seemed less desirable to feed after than before that sacred hour, though the custom be sanctioned by royalty. Another tomb to see before lunch, groaned Sir John Biddle, when the dregelman firmly insisted on the apis mausoleum. Oh darn, did we, what, where they buried bulls? I'd as soon see a slaughter-house on an empty stomach. Lady Biddle and I will go sit in the shadow of our camels. And they did, nor would they believe the twins' assertion that the dark mausoleum, with its cavernous rock chambers and granite falls, was the most impressive thing they had seen in Egypt. You say that to be aggravating, because we weren't there, I heard Lady Biddle snap, over the grumbling of the camels. The sky blazed down and the sand blazed up. The desert was white-hot, with a silver whiteness hotter than gold, and the foreshortened shadows were turquoise blue. It was heaven to arrive at a miniature oasis, and see the open-fronted, awning luncheon tent reflected with its green frame of palms in a clear lagoon, thoughtfully left by the receding Nile. At the side of this picture my popularity went up with a bound. It really was a lovely vision, the big tent lined with Egyptian applique work in many colors, the porch-like roof extensions supported by poles, and in its shadow a white table loaded with good things and guarded by Arab waders, waving beaded fly-whisks. Once we lingered over our chicken salad, fruit, and cool drinks, and lazily watched our camels munching burst-sim, all our first enthusiasm for these interesting beasts steamed back. The ladies called them poor deers and sweet things, and the men marveled at their calm endurance or the number of their leg joints. Manny was gay and charming, and looked at me so kindly that I thought she must mean to give a favorable answer to the buried letter. I blessed Cleopatra for the tip she had given, though I wondered what was the humiliation from which I could save her niece. After all, said I, the desert trip's going to pan out a success. But it must have been about this time that the wind rose. It blew Miss Hassett Bean's hat up instead of down, and other hats off when we had started again, and it blew into our eyes grains of sand as large as able-bodied, paving stones. Also as we passed through a picturesque mud village which ought to have pleased everybody, it blew into our noses, smells which Lady Biddle knew would give us plague. As if this were not enough the sand cart nearly turned over in a rut, and Miss Hassett Bean said that she must go home or be left in the desert to die. I had to lead the little stallion before she would consent to go on, and I realized when I had plowed through fifty yards of sand that the manicured snob of a leader was a thin, brown hero. By the time I had a mile or two of this the dark pyramids of Dashua were visible, and I knew that our camp was to be pitched not far beyond. My first emotion was pleasure, my second, panic. What if Slaney had forgotten his promise to remove the cook labels? Since remounting Farag, only the Coast Guard Campbell's had names, the baggage camels smelt as sweet without. Monnie and I had been bumping along side by side, and she had just said, If I tell you something you'll never breathe it to a soul, will you, when I saw those pyramids and was smitten with the fear of cook. Never, I vowed, torn between the desire to hear her secret and to dash ahead of the caravan into camp. It's about Antune, Monnie went on. You know I said to you the other night that perhaps I knew something about him? Yes, uh, oh yes. We were within a few hundred yards of the pyramids now. At any instant the camp might burst into sight. You don't look interested, but I am, awfully. You're sure you won't tell? Dead sure. Was that a flag fluttering on the horizon? Well then it isn't my business, of course, but one can't help being interested in him. He's such a romantic sort of figure, as you said yourself. And there's something so high and noble about him, I mean about his looks and manners, that one hates to be disappointed. You would have him with us, you know. I know, and I'm glad we have got him. It's an experience. I suppose he's rather wonderful, but don't you think he ought to remember that he isn't exactly a prince? He isn't even called Bey, and if he were, it's not the same as being a prince of ancient Egypt. In what way has he presumed on his, uh, near princehood? I believe he has fallen in love with Biddy. By Jove! Let the flag flutter. What flag? Oh, uh, that was only an expression. They use it where I live. Why shouldn't he fall in love with Biddy when you come to think of it? He's of a darker race. Though he does seem to like us. Of course she couldn't marry him. It wouldn't do. Would it? I don't know. I must think it over. Is that all you were going to tell me? No. I suppose it's natural he should fall in love with Biddy. She's so attractive. But the worst part about it is that he has proposed to Aunt Clara. Not possible. Yes, he has. I saw part of the letter, the first part. She's the only one of us who thinks it would be right to marry a man of Egyptian blood. Because you know she believes she's Egyptian herself. And she's always talking about reincarnations. I don't see that it's such a wonderful coincidence, his name being Antune. It wouldn't be so bad if he were in love with her, but it's Biddy who is always right in everything she says and does, according to him, just as I am always wrong. Aunt Clara is richer than Biddy. I can't bear to fancy that's why he has proposed. It would take away all the romance. I can't strip him of his romance yet, said I, torn again between interest in Manny's incredible statement and excitement which grew with the growing insides of those flags on the horizon. You may wrong him. If you saw only the first part of the letter, there could be no mistake. It was in hieroglyphics, and who but Antune would have written such a letter to Aunt Clara? She asked me to translate it the night she dug it up at Fustat. Dug—and when I'd read as far as Beautiful Queen, Star of My Heart, be my wife, she snatched the paper away and put it inside of her dress, saying she'd look up the rest in one of my books. Good heavens! You must have changed places at Fustat. That letter couldn't have been for her. It couldn't have been for anyone else. Beautiful Queen meant Cleopatra. She said so herself. I don't know what she's going to do about it. Do about it, I echoed desperately. Why—and just then my straining eyes saw that on the middle flag in the fluttering row were four large, red letters on a white ground. Slaney had betrayed me. Everything depended on getting that flag down before those letters declared themselves to my other eyes. Excuse me, I finished my sentence with a gasp. Monnie must have gasped also, as she saw me suddenly dash away from her at full speed of one camel-power. But I had no time to think about what she must think. I suppose I must have done something to the steering-gear of that camel, which Coast Guard camels do not permit. Whatever it was, it got me into the midst of that camp before I could draw breath, but I have a dim recollection of being caught by Arab arms and seeing suppressed Arab grins as I melancholy felt to see how far the end of my spine stuck out at the top of my head. That flag, pull it down, was my first gasp, pointing convulsively to the banner which shrieked, Cook, before they come. Used by my vehemence several Arabs scuttled to obey the order, but there were too many of them. Each hindered his neighbor, and as I danced about, making matters worse, out-pounced our withered chef from the kitchen tent. It was he brought that flag wrapped around something, exclaimed one of the men in Arabic. When he saw that we had other flags, but none of Cook, he gave it to us to put over the biggest tent, because he thought it shameful to have no flag of the masters. Cook isn't the master, I'm it, I burbled with a leap to catch the tell-tale square of white as it reluctantly came down, but I was too late. Sir John Biddle and Harry Snell, the newspaper man, came glumping up on their camels before I could stuff the flag in my pocket. What's the matter, they asked, as their animals squatted to let them down. Were you run away with? What are you so mad about? Hello, what's that flag? See, o-o-k. It should be over the kitchen tent, I heard myself explaining. Didn't you see? Cook. It's the Cook special flag. He brought it himself, but these chaps went and flew it over the dining-tent in place of the Union Jack. That's why he and I are mad. And I thanked all the stars on Money's tent flag that none of the set understood Arabic. After this, how could I hope to explain to Money that the hieroglyphic proposal was mine, and that she, not Cleopatra, ought to have dug it up? She isn't a girl used to having men run away from her on camel-back or anything else. So naturally she thought me a rude beast and showed it. Besides, even if I dared, I should have had no chance to straighten matters out. For, though the flag episode was after all no fault of slainies, there were a few little things which had escaped even his Napoleonic memory, and it was only by combining the feats of an acrobat with those of a juggler that I saved my reputation during the next half-hour. No sight could have been more beautiful in our eyes than that village of white tents in the waste of yellow sand. Our wildest imaginings could have pictured nothing more perfect, more peaceful. Tea was ready in the huge dining-tent where folding chairs were grouped round a white-colored table. The floor of sand was hidden with thick, bright-colored rugs, and it was finding tea, sea, and sun on the wrong side of one, which Miss Hassett Bean's foot turned up, that filled me with renewed alarms. Hastily I laid the rug straight, placed a chair upon it, and persuaded everybody to have tea before inspecting their bedroom tents. While they drank drafts and dabbled jam on an Egyptian conception of scams, I hurried like a haggard ghost from tent to tent, seeking the forbidden thing. Cook on the backs of the little mirrors hanging from the pole-hooks. Will it wash off? Cut it out with a pen-knife. Down on your knees and tear off the label from the wrong side of another carpet. Memo must do the one in the dining-tent when the people are asleep for the night. And three cooked towels into my pockets. Hastily pin a handkerchief over the name on a white bent of tent-wall. Must have it cut out and patched with something later. Shall have to pay damages when I settle up with slainy. Lady Macbeth wasn't in it with me. All she needed was a little water. I have to have pens and pen-knives and pockets all over the place. I didn't get any tea, but that was a detail. And everybody was so delighted with everything that my spirits rose, despite a snubber-two for money. For which Biddy tried to make up. People took desert strolls, or sat on dunes, and gazed into the sunset which couldn't have been better if I had turned it on myself. Along the western horizon ran a pale flame of green, blending with rose, rose blending with amethyst, and in the distance the pyramids of Dachur burned with the red of pigeon-blood rubies. The wind had died among the desert dunes, and it was not till after dinner that anyone realized the arctic fall of the temperature. It was too cold to enjoy playing bridge or any of the games I had brought, and the only hope of comfort was in bed. People said good night to each other in the comparatively warm dining-tent, and then gave surprised shrieks or grunts, according to sex, at the piercing cold. Several of the elder ladies fell over ten tropes, despite the large lanterns illuminating the desert, and had to be escorted to their bedroom tents and soothed. After this silence reigned for a few minutes, and I had stealthily began to work on the biggest rug-label, when a rose a clamor of voices, and presently appeared the drego-men lent by slainy. Eight ladies wishing hot water-bottles, he explained. But there were no hot water-bottles. We had thought of everything, it seemed, except hot water-bottles. I tell them very sorry, but can't have, use of suggested looking please. Let me think, I groaned. What about the mineral water-bottles we emptied at lunch and dinner? Let the cook boil water, and we'll supply the bottles. This was done, and I was proud of the inspiration, with the pride that comes before a fall. When I began to write, in my bedroom tent, wrapped up in all the blankets of the bed that should be Anthony's, I had the place to myself. But about midnight a head was unexpectedly thrust through the door-flap. It looked ghostly in the haze of color made by the gorgeous applique work of high-roof and octagon walls, which gave an effect of sitting at the bottom of a giant kaleidoscope. Who's that, I hissed, in a whisper meant to be discreet, but which roused a camel or two in the ring outside the tents. Biddle, Sir John Biddle, replied the head, I saw your light and remembered that you had your tent to yourself tonight. Those hot water-bottles have been leaking. There's one at least gone wrong in most of the lady's tents. The married men have given their beds to the girls who are drowned out. It was your idea about those bottles, wasn't it? I expect you'll hear from it in the morning. Three of us want to come and camp in here with you. All right, I sighed with a sinking heart. I like sitting up, and you can toss for the cots. At this moment Sir John Biddle reposes in one of them, General Harlow in the other. These gentlemen were so affected with the cold that they went to bed in their clothes, then got up to put on their overcoats, then got up again and put on their hats. On the floor lies a certain mills of Manchester, rolled in all the rugs, except one which I have on, after surrendering my blankets. He has his head in a basket to keep off the icy draft, and in the ruggy region of his spine, as he rests on his side, are the letters C-O-O-K. I wonder if I could rip them off without waking him up. End of Chapter 14 Part 2