A faint shudder ran over him.

He drew in the reins of imagination.

Of course, the probabilities were that he was hopelessly astray—one

usually is on such occasions—but this time, it so happened, he was

singularly right. Before one thing only his ready invention stopped

every time. This vileness, this notion of unworthiness in Vance, could

not be negative merely. A man with that face was no inactive weakling.

The motive he was at such pains to conceal, betraying its existence by

that very fact, moved, surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, it

never slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had a plan deep out of

sight. And Henriot remembered how the man’s soft approach along the

carpeted corridor had made him start. He recalled the quasi shock it

gave him. He thought again of the feeling of discomfort he had

experienced.

Next, his eager fancy sought to plumb the business these two had

together in Egypt—in the Desert. For the Desert, he felt convinced,

had brought them out. But here, though he constructed numerous

explanations, another barrier stopped him. Because he knew. This woman

was in touch with that aspect of ancient Egypt he himself had ever

sought in vain; and not merely with stones the sand had buried so deep,

but with the meanings they once represented, buried so utterly by the

sands of later thought.

And here, being ignorant, he found no clue that could lead to any

satisfactory result, for he possessed no knowledge that might guide

him. He floundered—until Fate helped him. And the instant Fate helped

him, the warning and presentiment he had dismissed as fanciful, became

real again. He hesitated. Caution acted. HE would think twice before

taking steps to form acquaintance. “Better not,” thought whispered.

“Better leave them alone, this queer couple. They’re after things that

won’t do you any good.” This idea of mischief, almost of danger, in

their purposes was oddly insistent; for what could possibly convey it?

But, while he hesitated, Fate, who sent the warning, pushed him at the

same time into the circle of their lives; at first tentatively—he

might still have escaped; but soon urgently—curiosity led him

inexorably towards the end.

IV

IT WAS so simple a manoeuvre by which Fate began the innocent game.

The woman left a couple of books behind her on the table one night, and

Henriot, after a moment’s hesitation, took them out after her. He knew

the titles—The House of the Master, and The House of the Hidden

Places, both singular interpretations of the Pyramids that once had

held his own mind spellbound. Their ideas had been since disproved, if

he remembered rightly, yet the titles were a clue—a clue to that

imaginative part of his mind that was so busy constructing theories and

had found its stride. Loose sheets of paper, covered with notes in a

minute handwriting, lay between the pages; but these, of course, he did

not read, noticing only that they were written round designs of various

kinds—intricate designs.

He discovered Vance in a corner of the smoking-lounge. The woman had

disappeared.

Vance thanked him politely. “My aunt is so forgetful sometimes,” he

said, and took them with a covert eagerness that did not escape the

other’s observation. He folded up the sheets and put them carefully in

his pocket. On one there was an ink-sketched map, crammed with detail,

that might well have referred to some portion of the Desert. The points

of the compass stood out boldly at the bottopm. There were involved

geometrical designs again.