nearly eleven o’clock, and all was silent and deserted except for the armed Arab watchman in his hooded cloak. On his right as he walked lay a small public garden, a prettily laid out space rising on the huge boulders which form the gorge of the Nile – a place filled by high feathery palms, flaming poinsettias, and a wealth of tropical flowers.
But as he passed the entrance in the shadow there suddenly broke upon his ears a woman’s voice, speaking rapidly in Italian – a language with which he was well conversant.
He halted instantly. The voice was Lola’s! In the shadow he could just distinguish two forms, that of a man and a woman.
He drew back in breathless amazement. Mademoiselle’s eagerness to return across from Elephantine was now explained. She had kept a secret tryst.
As he watched, he heard her speaking quickly and angrily in an imperative tone. The man was standing in the full moonlight, and Waldron could see him quite plainly – a dark, short-bearded man of middle-age and middle-height, wearing a soft felt Tyrolese hat.
He made no response, but only bowed low at his unceremonious dismissal.
The stranger was about to leave her when suddenly, as though on reflection, she exclaimed, still speaking in perfect Italian:
“No. Return here in half an hour. I will go back to the hotel and write my reply. Until then do not be seen. Gigleux must never know that you have been here – you understand? I know that you will remain my friend, though everyone’s hand is now raised against me, but if Gigleux suspected that you had been here he would cable home at once – and then who knows what might not happen! I could never return. I would rather kill myself?”
“The signorina may rely upon my absolute discretion,” declared the man in a low, intense voice.
“Benissimo,” was her hurried response. “Return here in half an hour, and I will give you my answer. It is hard, cruel, inhuman of them to treat me thus! But it is, I suppose, only what I must expect. I am only a woman, and I must make the sacrifice.”
And with a wave of her small, ungloved hand she dismissed him, and took a path which led through the public garden back to the hotel by a shorter cut.
Meanwhile Waldron strode on past the railway station to the quay, glanced at his watch, and then, half an hour later, after he had dispatched his telegram he was lurking in the shadows at that same spot.
He watched Lola hand a letter to the stranger, and wish him “Addio e buon viaggio!”
Then he followed the bearded man down to the station, where, from a European official of whom he made a confidential inquiry, he learnt that the stranger had arrived in Assouan from Cairo only two hours before, bearing a return ticket to Europe by the mail route via Port Said and Brindisi.
With curiosity he watched the Italian leave by the mail for Cairo ten minutes later, and then turned away and retraced his steps to the Cataract Hotel, plunged deep in thought.
There was a mystery somewhere – a strange and very grave mystery.
What could be that message of such extreme importance and secrecy that it could not be trusted to the post?
Who was old Gigleux of whom Mademoiselle Duprez went in such fear? Was she really what she represented herself to be?
No. He felt somehow assured that all was not as it should be. A mystery surrounded both uncle and niece, while the angular Miss Lambert remained as silent and impenetrable as the sphinx.
Diplomat and man of the world as was Hubert Waldron – a man who had run the whole gamut of life in the gay centres of Europe – he was naturally suspicious, for the incident of that night seemed inexplicable.
Something most secret and important must be in progress to necessitate the travelling of a special messenger from Europe far away into Upper Egypt, merely to deliver a letter and obtain a response.
“Yes,” he murmured to himself as he passed through the portals of the hotel, which were thrown open to him by two statuesque Nubian servants, who bowed low as he passed. “Yes; there are some curious features about this affair. I will watch and discover the truth. Lola is in some secret and imminent peril. Of that I feel absolutely convinced.”
Chapter Three.
In the Holy of Holies
Five days later.
Boulos, the faithful Egyptian dragoman, in his red fez and long caftan of yellow silk reaching to his heels, stood leaning over the bows of the small white steamer which was slowly wending its way around the many curves of the mighty river which lay between the Island of Philae and the Second Cataract at Wady Haifa, the gate of the Sudan.
No railway runs through that wild desert of rock and sand, and the road to Khartoum lies by water over those sharp rocks and ever-shifting shoals where navigation is always dangerous, and progress only possible by daylight.
Boulos, the dark, pleasant-faced man who is such an inveterate gossip, who knows much more of Egyptology than his parrot-talk to travellers, and who is popular with all those who go to and fro between Cairo and Khartoum, stood chatting in Arabic with the white-bearded, black-faced reis, or pilot.
The latter, wearing a white turban, was wrapped in a red cloak though the sun was blazing. He squatted upon a piece of carpet in the bows, idly smoking a cigarette from dawn till sundown, and navigating the vessel by raising his right or left hand as signal to the man at the helm.
A Nile steamer has no captain. The Nubian reis is supreme over the native crew, and being a man of vast experience of the river, knows by the appearance of the water where lie the ever-shifting sand-banks.
“Oh yes,” remarked the reis in Arabic; “by Allah’s grace we shall anchor at Abu Simbel by sunset. It is now just past the noon,” added the bearded old man – who looked like a prophet – as he glanced upward at the burning sun.
“And when shall we leave?” asked the dragoman.
“At noon to-morrow – if Allah willeth it,” replied the old man. “To-night the crew will give a fantasia. Will you tell the passengers.”
“If it be thy will,” responded Boulos, drawing at his excellent cigarette.
“How farest thou this journey?”
“Very well. The Prophet hath given me grace to sell several statuettes and scarabs. The little American hath bought my bronze of Isis.”
“I congratulate thee, O wise one among the infidels,” laughed the old man, raising his left hand to alter the course of the vessel. “Thy bronze hath lain for many moons – eh?”
“Since the last Ramadan. And now, with Allah’s help, I have sold it to the American for a thousand piastres.”
Old Melek the reis grunted, and thoughtfully rolled another cigarette, which he handed unstuck to his friend, the sign of Arab courtesy. Boulos ran his tongue along it, and raising his hand to his fez in thanks, lit it with great gusto, glancing up to the deck where his charges were lolling beneath the awning.
Lola, in white, and wearing her sun-helmet, leaned over the rail and called in her broken English:
“Boulos, when do we arrive at Abu Simbel?”
“At
