“You are certain?”
“Quite certain.”
“Did he see you?”
“I couldn’t say. He gave no sign to show that he had seen me.”
John Graham lighted a cigarette with much care.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he said, carelessly. “You are as safe here as at the Ritz.”
But there was unrest in the glance which he cast out across the prospect touched by moon-magic into supernatural beauty.
In the distance gleamed a fairy city of silvern minarets, born, it seemed, from the silvern stream. Beyond lay the night mystery of the desert, into whose vastness marched the ghostly acacias. The discordant chattering and chanting from the river-bank merged into a humming song, not unmusical. The howling of the dogs, even, found a place in the orchestral scheme.
Behind him, in the hotel, was European and American life—modernity; before him was that other life, endless and unchanging. There was something cold, sombre, and bleak in the wonderful prospect, something shocking in the presence of those sight-seeing, careless folk, the luxurious hotel, all that was Western and new, upon that threshold of the ancient, changeless desert.
A menace, too, substantial yet cloaked with the mystery of the motherland of mysteries, had arisen now. Although he had assured Eileen that Gizeh was as safe as Piccadilly, he had too much imagination to be unaware that from the Egypt of Cook’s to the Egypt of secrets is but a step.