I wondered”—he smiled again slightly at the nature of the

request—“if—by any chance—you had a pocket compass you could lend

me?”

“Ah, a compass, yes! Please don’t apologise. I believe I have

one—if you’ll wait a moment. Come in, won’t you? I’ll have a look.”

The other thanked him but waited in the passage. Henriot, it so

happened, had a compass, and produced it after a moment’s search.

“I am greatly indebted to you—if I may return it in the morning.

You will forgive my disturbing you at such an hour. My own is broken,

and I wanted—er—to find the true north.”

Henriot stammered some reply, and the man was gone. It was all over

in a minute. He locked his door and sat down in his chair to think. The

little incident had upset him, though for the life of him he could not

imagine why. It ought by rights to have been almost ludicrous, yet

instead it was the exact reverse—half threatening. Why should not a

man want a compass? But, again, why should he? And at midnight? The

voice, the eyes, the near presence—what did they bring that set his

nerves thus asking unusual questions? This strange impression that

something grave was happening, something unearthly—how was it born

exactly? The man’s proximity came like a shock. It had made him start.

He brought—thus the idea came unbidden to his mind—something with him

that galvanised him quite absurdly, as fear does, or delight, to great

wonder. There was a music in his voice too—a certain—well, he could

only call it lilt, that reminded him of plainsong, intoning, chanting.

Drawling was not the word at all.

He tried to dismiss it as imagination, but it would not be

dismissed. The disturbance in himself was caused by something not

imaginary, but real. And then, for the first time, he discovered that

the man had brought a faint, elusive suggestion of perfume with him, an

aromatic odour, that made him think of priests and churches. The ghost

of it still lingered in the air. Ah, here then was the origin of the

notion that his voice had chanted: it was surely the suggestion of

incense. But incense, intoning, a compass to find the true north—at

midnight in a Desert hotel!

A touch of uneasiness ran through the curiosity and excitement that

he felt.

And he undressed for bed. “Confound my old imagination,” he thought,

“what tricks it plays me! It’ll keep me awake!”

But the questions, once started in his mind, continued. He must find

explanation of one kind or another before he could lie down and sleep,

and he found it at length in—the stars. The man was an astronomer of

sorts; possibly an astrologer into the bargain! Why not? The stars were

wonderful above Helouan. Was there not an observatory on the Mokattam

Hills, too, where tourists could use the telescopes on privileged days?

He had it at last. He even stole out on to his balcony to see if the

stranger perhaps was looking through some wonderful apparatus at the

heavens. There rooms were on the same side. But the shuttered windows

revealed no stooping figure with eyes glued to a telescope. The stars

blinked in their many thousands down upon the silent desert. The night

held neither sound nor movement. There was a cool breeze blowing across

the Nile from the Lybian Sands. It nipped; and he stepped back quickly

into the room again. Drawing the mosquito curtains carefully about the

bed, he put the light out and turned over to sleep.

And sleep came quickly, contrary to his expectations, though it was

a light and surface sleep. That last glimpse of the darkened Desert

lying beneath the Egyptian stars had touched him with some hand of

awful power that ousted the first, lesser excitement.