"How did he get there?" asked Cairn.
The Indian shrugged his shoulders.
"I cannot say, but next he come to Wady Halfa, then he is in Assouan, and from Assouan he come down to Luxor! Yesterday an Egyptian friend told me Khamsîn is in the Fayûm. Therefore he is there—the man of evil—for he bring the hot wind with him."
The Indian was growing impressive, and two American tourists stopped to listen to his words.
"To-night—to-morrow,"—he spoke now almost in a whisper, glancing about him as if apprehensive of being overheard—"he may be here, in Cairo, bringing with him the scorching breath of the desert—the scorpion wind!"
He stood up, casting off the mystery with which he had invested his story, and smiling insinuatingly. His work was done; his fee was due. Sime rewarded him with five piastres, and he departed, bowing.
"You know, Sime—" Cairn began to speak, staring absently the while after the fortune-teller, as he descended the carpeted steps and rejoined the throng on the sidewalk below—"you know, if a man—anyone, could take advantage of such a wave of thought as this which is now sweeping through Egypt—if he could cause it to concentrate upon him, as it were, don't you think that it would enable him to transcend the normal, to do phenomenal things?"
"By what process should you propose to make yourself such a focus?"
"I was speaking impersonally, Sime. It might be possible—"
"It might be possible to dress for dinner," snapped Sime, "if we shut up talking nonsense! There's a carnival here to-night; great fun. Suppose we concentrate our brain-waves on another Scotch and soda?"