IN CAIRO
"It's good news!" said Miss Jeffries with bright positives.
It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He
had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had
been an important dinner with an important bank official passing
through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last, looking
extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes.
And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful
object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams.
"He's safe--absolutely safe," McLean confirmed.
He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was arrested
judgment.
"Safe--_where_?"
"At his camp ... I just returned--just in time to dine. I motored
out this morning."
"Oh!... It took your whole day. I am so sorry!" For a moment the
girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean.
"You must simply hate me," she told him repentantly, dropping into
one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been
guarding. "Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details....--Uncle
and Aunt are in the Lounge, and I should like you to meet them, but
they'll be there forever and I do want to hear first.... Was it
fearfully hot?"
"Oh, rather," murmured the young man, confused by this change of
interest. "I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for
deserts? I got up a good breeze going, for I was a bit wrought up,
you know--not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day."
"And he was out at his camp," said Jinny thoughtfully. "How--how
long had he been there?"
"He says he started that night," said McLean non-committally.
"Oh!... That night.... That was rather sudden, wasn't it?"
"Jack's sudden, you know," mentioned his friend uncomfortably. "And
he had a lot of finds to pack up for transport--they are taking
their stuff to the museum and Jack had been away so long, here in
the city--"
"No wonder I didn't hear then!" said the girl with a laugh in which
it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret
clamor of chagrin and humiliation.
Of course she had _wanted_ Jack to be safe.... But he might have
been ill--or away on some official summons--
Just back at his diggings. Gone off on an impulse, with no thought
to let her know....
And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious
concern which he had probably taken for a tender interest....
Heaven knows what disillusionizing thing Jack had said to him that
day!... Men were too hateful.
And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so
worried about was quite well and busy, thank you, only he had
overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word--
In Jinny's ears was the rush of the furies' wings. But on Jinny's
lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining
shield for the wounds of the spirit.
"That _is_ a comfort," she said with pleasant, friendly warmth. "You
don't know how horridly responsible I felt! Really, Jack ought to
have let me know--but that's Jack all over. He's never grown up."
"He's not had much time," returned McLean from the height of his
twenty-nine years.
"He never will," said Jinny sagely, "not until--well, not until
he meets some girl, you know, who will make him feel really
responsible."
It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting
so assiduously of late had certainly not added to his claims to
responsibility!
Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields, on Mont Blanc,
where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no
intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of
affairs.
"I have spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for
those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered
young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls--but it never takes! Not
seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care
anything really about girls--and he does need somebody to get him
out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings ... But of course
you think I am a sentimental thing!"
McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatedly
engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable Platonic basis of
her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and
brightened and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its
astonishment.
He marveled at his friend. To turn to something fantastic, something
bizarre--for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem--when he
had this Miss Jeffries for a friend--but probably the young lady
herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not
easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as
brothers and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm,
honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness.
The worse for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to
mend his troubled future.
It was not only Ryder's troubled future that troubled McLean--it
was also Ryder's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his
mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb he had
not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been
no moment for revelation; Thatcher had hung about them and Hamdi
Bey, of all men, had requested a place in McLean's motor for the
return to Cairo.
And that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it
for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none.
"Get the old devil out of here," had been Jack's furious appeal,
referring to Hamdi. "Deny everything to him. Only get him out."
And McLean had got him out.
The sheik and his followers after a murmurous conference with the
bey had galloped off; the police had turned towards their post and
Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting
motor.
Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean and McLean was not sorry for
the opportunity to exchange implications. The bey had unfolded his
sympathetic friendship for the sheik; McLean had unfolded a cold
surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a
prominent archaeologist. The bey had produced the evidence and
McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder
if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift
it, for the benefit of all concerned.
Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a
rumor against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder
to take the matter up.
And there he perceived that even the suave and politic Hamdi
squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige
and political power and all sorts of unknown influence.... And
native testimony, while voluable and unscrupulous, had a way of
offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning
investigators of the law.
And with no real evidence against Ryder--
The matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be
dropped. Unless the girl--whatever girl they sought--could be
discovered.
If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American he would
choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the bey's capacity for
assassination or poisoning while he bade him farewell before the
dark wall of his palace entrance.
Between them had passed no reference to the bey's recent loss. Since
it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the bey's wife,
he judged it equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes.
The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide
upon any creditable explanation. It would have to wait until he saw
Ryder in the next day or two--for Ryder had told him he would try to
get in with his finds as soon as possible.
But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind he
had found himself asking, through the courses of that important
dinner and now in the pauses of his conversation with Miss
Jeffries--Was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense
anxiety of Jack's--had Jack led them on for his own young amusement?
But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with
Jinny Jeffries for a vis-à-vis.
A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden
tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's
unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how
busy McLean must be--and McLean found himself somehow embarked in
sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Miss Jeffries
seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work
throughout the country.
And as he had talked he found himself noticing things that he had
never noticed before about girls, the wave of bright hair against a
flushed cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of
crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet.
"And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring.
"Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and
Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi--"
"What _do_ you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl.
It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint
and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful
interest and bright vivacity.
And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever
stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast--like a poor hidden
corpse beneath bright roses--why at two and twenty expectancies
flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin
is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all
the more delicate for a dimming cloud.
Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing.
When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and
she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!"
he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse
shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again.
"We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit.
Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell.
"Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day--!" murmured
Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the
balance.
He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which
brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled
looking note which he held crumpled in his hand.
He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and
while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries
the note.
"From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains
itself."
But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying
that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this
ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo
Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and
call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak
and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere.
"What is it--another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly.
McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him
horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire.
He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for
the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat
and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with
him.
"If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared,
and then, smiling, "What _do_ you suppose he is up to now?"
McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he
didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration
to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't
thought up some brilliant excuse.
He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured
their adieux and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his
waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
* * * * *
The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning
in the gates and before the steps of a back entrance other camels,
kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even
the camel's most exhausted moments oppose commands, were being
relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute and
exact direction of Thatcher.
And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a
thin, bronzed face flushed with impatience was imperiously conveying
the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi.
Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals.
"I asked for motors--and they furnished these!" he cried
disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. "It took us all day
though we half killed the brutes.... Hello, Jinny, did you bring the
things?"
With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That
glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. "Come in, both
of you," he called, plunging after his men.
At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jeffries until the
men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and
in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they
came mechanically up.
McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well rehearsed
scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his rôle of dumb
subservience was clearly defined.
"You understand," Ryder was calling to the men, "nothing more goes
in this room. All else down stairs.... Come in," he said hurriedly
to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them,
"of course--this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here,
do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't."
"Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little
helplessly.
"No--no--not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them,"
said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your
petticoat is coming off!"
"Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly.
"Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when
your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens."
"But it doesn't run in families!"
Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had
turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath
the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it
wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty--"
He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought
those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of
brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that
the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking.
"Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside.
The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry,
dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an
archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at
those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's
flash--
To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the
pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the
shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the
supernatural in the revelation.
In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its
place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness
to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks.