TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT
"It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble," Andrew
McLean remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the
packet which his unexpected luncheon guest had pushed over to his
plate.
"Uncommon thoughtful. It's undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the
portrait of the man's wife--whatever his name was."
"Delcassé," said Jack Ryder promptly.
Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the
silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard
morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was
hot and dusty.
"You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that
special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he
was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of
a clue--eh, what?"
"It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this
Frenchman was working, for the first thing--"
"Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that
tomb."
"Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been
stolen and hidden--but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely
that this was the very tomb where Delcassé was working at the time
of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous
excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern
got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of
the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcassé wrote his
book about--looks very much as if it might be by the same artist.
There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical
drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail--but there,
you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland.
You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high,
and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my
word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Thi
Tomb would be grubbing away.... Lord, they could choose their find
in those days!"
"It's uncommonly likely," McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished
cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the
duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame
Delcassé, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame
Delcassé.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch
judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would
hardly have lost her miniature, or have sold it, except under
pressing conditions. In fact--"
Ryder was brusque with his facts.
"That doesn't matter--Madame Delcassé doesn't matter. The thing that
matters is--"
As brusquely he broke off. His tongue balked before the revelation
but he goaded it on.
"That there is a girl--the living image of that picture."
"I say!" McLean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. "That's
getting on.... You mean you've seen her?"
Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette.
"Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's
like?"
"You'd think it her picture."
"It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the
artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl
like that--! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what
name does she go by?"
"Oh, her name--she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused
uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be
just about the right age--eighteen or so. She--she's had awf'ly
hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated.
The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh,
Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke.
"I did not know that you knew any of that sort--the poor, wee lost
thing.... Tell me, now--"
"Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost
lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man--except myself." He
rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It
helped him on with his story.
"The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks
she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and
died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own.
She says she's his only child."
He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually
to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly
vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into
his friend's mind.
McLean knew--slightly--Tewfick Pasha. He knew--supremely--the
inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the
utter impossibility of any man's speech with her.
Yet here was Ryder telling him--
Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the
girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He
touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more
lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate
and the exchange of confidences.
"She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name
was her mother's--Aimée. So there is--"
"But the likeness, man--her face? She never unveiled to you?"
"Well, the next night--"
"The _next_ night?"
It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's
astonishment.
"Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I
told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right--there
had been some footsteps the night before--"
"And you went? And she came?"
"Do you suppose she sent her father?"
"You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted
grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her
veil--"
"Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily--so soon does
conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex!
"That was just as I was going--gone, in fact. I looked back and she
had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face--I saw her
as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a
picture of her. She is Delcassé's daughter and she doesn't know it.
Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk--"
"Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been
thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love
affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?"
"Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that
the father was so in love that he never married again."
"H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of
pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and
tattlers. However--as to this Delcassé inheritance, I'll just notify
the French legation--"
"We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to
lose. The girl is to be married."
"Married?... But she'll inherit the money just the same."
"But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her
father--her alleged father--has just sprung this on her. Says there
are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty
work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the
girl.... And we've got to stop that."
"I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully.
"If we can? When the girl is French? When she's been lied to and
deceived?"
"She seems to have been taken jolly well care of. Brought up as his
own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack," McLean advised dryly
with a shrewd glance from his gray eyes at the other's unguarded
heat.
Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again. A lovely face. A
lovely unfortunate creature.... And if the daughter looked like
that, small wonder that Jack was touched.... Beauty in distress.
Some men had all the luck, McLean reflected. He had never taken Jack
for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to
masquerades with one girl and coming home with another....
Jack was too good looking, that was the trouble with the youngster.
Good looking and gay humored. The kind that attracted women....
Women and romance were never fluttering about lank, light-eyed,
uninteresting old Scotchmen of twenty-nine!
A mild and wistful pang, which McLean refused to name, made itself
known.
"I'll see the legation," he began.
"At once. I'll wait," urged Ryder.
And at once McLean went.
* * * * *
The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative
of his interest. That special agent had returned to France but his
address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcassé would be
grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send.
"Send!" repudiated Ryder hotly. "Write to France and back--wait for
somebody to come over! Can't the legation do something now?"
"The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from
the man who is, at any rate, her step-father."
"They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They
can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can
threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's
marriage."
"And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage.
And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to
alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize
fifteen-years-ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of
the responsibilities of foreign representatives."
"But to let him dispose of a French girl--"
"He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a
wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his
motives--"
"Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right--"
Carefully McLean ignored the other's wrath.
Patiently he explained. "It's not what I think, my dear fellow, it's
what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of
getting the marriage stopped."
"Then I'll do it myself," declared Ryder. "I'll see this Tewfick
Pasha and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl
only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's
representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother
and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her
liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can
always be bluffed."
In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his
quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to
heart.... And it was a bad business.
"You will let me do the telling," he stated at last, grimly. "What
can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle."
And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and
constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of
Tewfick Pasha.