"It could easily have been hired at Assuan," Biddy exclaimed. "And it could have beaten us. We've stopped at such heaps of temples where other boats only touch coming back."
"If there were a plot, as you are always imagining, the dahabeah would have to be near here, too," Monny laughed incredulously.
"And so it may be. We haven't seen round the corner of the Great Temple yet."
"One would think to hear you talk, that you'd expected this poor little sanctuary to be stuffed with murderers, or at the least, kidnappers."
"Ugh, don't speak of it!" Biddy shuddered, "Let's go out into the sunlight again, as quick as ever we can!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
WORTH PAYING FOR
When Anthony says that he will find out things he seldom fails. Perhaps nobody but a green-turbaned Hadji could so speedily have screwed information out of secretive Arabs, paid to be silent. And he had to fit deductions into spaces of the puzzle left empty by fibs and glib self-excusings. What he did learn was this: a dragoman had come, in a small boat, from a steam dahabeah to the Enchantress Isis while we were away at Kasr Ibrim. He presented credentials written out for him in Cairo by Miss Rachel Guest, and dated a few weeks ago. Inquiring for her, he seemed sorry to hear that she had gone on the excursion. The dragoman refused to disturb Antoun Effendi, on hearing that the Hadji was writing in his cabin. His errand was not of enough importance to trouble so illustrious a man. All he wanted was permission to type one or two letters for his employers on the neighbouring dahabeah, which possessed no machine. In the absence of Mr. Kruger, who had gone on shore for exercise, the dragoman was given this privilege. Possibly he had taken some of the boat's letter-paper. Who could be certain of these trifles? Possibly, also, he had walked about with one of the cabin stewards, to see the luxurious appointments of the Enchantress Isis. As for paying money for these small favours, who could tell? And nobody knew if the steam dahabeah had hurried on before us, to anchor out of sight round the oblique façade of Abu Simbel. In any case, when we went to look for the suspicious craft seen near Kasr Ibrim, she was not among the two or three small private dahabeahs of artists and others, moored within a mile of the Great Temple. Notwithstanding her absence, however, Anthony and I (suddenly confidential friends again) thought it likely that the shadows in the Sanctuary had not been its only tenants when we entered there. The invaluable Bedr knew enough of the Nile Temples to know that the sun's first light strikes only the altar and the statues over it, in Abu Simbel's inner shrine: that the four corners of the small cavern-room remain pitch black, unless the place is artificially illuminated: and that this is never done at sunrise. The dragoman and one or both of his employers would have had no difficulty in getting into the temple before the first streak of dawn, if they had warned its guardian the night before. So far, our deductions were simple, after learning how the trick of the typewritten note had been managed: but it was not so easy to guess the object of the plot. Was Monny Gilder to have been murdered in the dark Sanctuary, or was she to have been kidnapped? Either seemed an impossible undertaking, unless the plotters were willing to face certain detection and arrest.
As it was, we had no more tangible proof against the man than we had before, at the House of the Crocodile, in the desert near Medinet, at Asiut, and at Luxor. With a sly cleverness which did Bedr, or those employing him, much credit, they had screened themselves behind others. Even if we had the names of the "tourists" Bedr had served as dragoman, and if we could lay our hands on their shoulders, we had not enough evidence of what they had done to obtain a warrant of arrest: and this of course they knew. Our best chance, Anthony thought, lay in springing a surprise on them, as they had vainly (so far) tried to do with us; and when we got them somehow at our mercy, force out the truth.