Rekka was a mile behind.
"It will take us fully an hour yet," said Dr. Cairn, "to reach the pyramid, although it appears so near."
Indeed, in the violet dusk, the great mastabah Pyramid of Méydûm seemed already to loom above them, although it was quite four miles away. The narrow path along which they trotted their donkeys ran through the fertile lowlands of the Fayûm. They had just passed a village, amid an angry chorus from the pariah dogs, and were now following the track along the top of the embankment. Where the green carpet merged ahead into the grey ocean of sand the desert began, and out in that desert, resembling some weird work of Nature rather than anything wrought by the hand of man, stood the gloomy and lonely building ascribed by the Egyptologists to the Pharaoh Sneferu.
Dr. Cairn and his son rode ahead, and Sime, with Ali Mohammed, brought up the rear of the little company.
"I am completely in the dark, sir," said Robert Cairn, "respecting the object of our present journey. What leads you to suppose that we shall find Antony Ferrara here?"
"I scarcely hope to find him here," was the enigmatical reply, "but I am almost certain that he is here. I might have expected it, and I blame myself for not having provided against—this."
"Against what?"
"It is impossible, Rob, for you to understand this matter. Indeed, if I were to publish what I know—not what I imagine, but what I know—about the Pyramid of Méydûm I should not only call down upon myself the ridicule of every Egyptologist in Europe; I should be accounted mad by the whole world."
His son was silent for a time; then:
"According to the guide books," he said, "it is merely an empty tomb."