“I know, I know,” he said. “Studied all about them, even read the Koran. Frightful stuff, too.”
“No worse than most documents revealed by heaven,” I said gently, not wanting to get on to that subject. “But tell me what brings you to these parts?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Butler genially, taking the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river a boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. “The manager tells me you’ve been up here for twenty years.”
“You must have found a language in common.”
Butler chuckled. “These devils understand you well enough if they want to. But you....”
“I was an archaeologist at one time,” I said and I told him the familiar story which I have repeated so many times now that I have almost come to believe it. “I was from Boston originally. Do you know Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing. Too much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago, I decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs.” This was a new, plausible touch, “Egypt was always my single passion and so I came to Luxor, to this hotel where I’ve been quite content, though hardly industrious.”
“How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization.”
“I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic world of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special dispensation.”
“Old hand, then, with the natives?”
“But a little out of practice. All my Egyptian friends have seen fit to die and I live now as though I were already dead myself.”