And as Anstice moved to obey, a very tumult in his heart, Sir Richard turned back to the wildly-shouting crowd and succeeded in reclaiming Anstice's portmanteau and Gladstone bag from the clutches of the blue-robed fiends who fought one another for its possession.
When they were clear of the quay, driving behind the two long-tailed little horses along the glaring streets, beneath the thinly-leaved and dusty trees, Anstice turned to Sir Richard interrogatively.
"Now, sir, can you tell me what's wrong? Mr. Cheniston is ill, you say. Do you know the nature of his illness?"
"Enteric, I'm afraid," Sir Richard informed him gravely. "He went on a shooting expedition a week or two ago with the rich Egyptian for whom he has been carrying through a big irrigation job, and one day, when, through a miscalculation, the wine and provisions did not turn up, the party lunched at a mud-village on eggs and coffee. Being particularly thirsty Bruce indulged in a small glass of water with slices of citron, and although the host's servants swore by the Beard of the Prophet and so on through all their most sacred oaths that they had boiled the water first, the odds are that they had not, and that it came straight from the river or some indescribably polluted well. It seems that the pilgrims had passed that way, and owing to their pleasing habit of dropping a little of their precious 'holy' water into the wells they meet, some of those wells are absolute hotbeds of infection, so to speak."
"Whew!" Anstice whistled to express his consternation. "And then, of course, Mr. Cheniston came home and sickened for this illness."
"Yes. At first he made light of it, said the expedition had been fatiguing, he had a touch of the sun, and so on. But at last the disease manifested itself unmistakably, and three days ago I set out for Cairo to try to get some medical help."
"There is no doctor out there?"
"No. You see it is only a tiny village—hardly that—a settlement in the midst of a little colony of Bedouins. Iris was first persuaded to go there by a woman she met in Cairo, a Padre's wife who had gone out—at least the Padre had—to try the effect of the climate on weak lungs. They have one kiddie, a child of seven or eight, and they were so pleased with the place that they stayed on, and were the only white people in the village, with the exception of a young Australian who had lost his money and went out there to try to grow vegetables, and a rather eccentric French artist who set up his studio in a sort of disused fort built on a high rocky plateau about a mile above the little settlement. He has gone back to France now, taking with him some really marvellous studies of the desert, so they say."
"How far is the place from Cairo?"
"About a day and a half's journey on horseback. Of course, if it had been possible to bring Bruce in to Cairo that would have been the best thing. But we daren't take the risk. Mrs. Wood, the Padre's wife, is a first-class nurse, and she and Iris are doing their very best for the poor fellow. But still"—Sir Richard shook his head—"there's no doubt the illness has got a fast grip of him, and I'm afraid of the result, Anstice, I confess I am afraid."