“I’m afraid the details of findings in the valley yonder,” I gestured toward Libya and the last acres of the kings, “won’t be of much use to you. I avoid all mention of people less than two millennia dead.”
“Even so.” But Jessup did not pursue the subject. I relaxed a little.
“I must tell you,” he said suddenly, “that I was suspicious of you.”
Now I thought, now it comes; then I was amused: right at the end they arrive, when it was too late for them, or for me. “What form did your suspicions take?” My fear left me in one last flurry, like a bird departing in a cold wind for another latitude, leaving the branch which held it all summer through to wither in the snow.
“I thought you might be the one we have so often heard of ... in legend, that is: the enemy of Cave.”
“Which enemy?”
“The nameless one or at least we know a part of his name if lutherist is derived from it.”
“What made you suspect me?”
“Because were I an enemy of Cave and were I forced to disappear, I should come to just such a town in just such a country as this.”
“Perfectly logical,” I agreed. “But there are many towns in the Arab League, in Asia too. Why suppose one old man to be this mythical villain?”