The Fortieth Door | Page 2

and blew in his bronzed face cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves.
He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe--but no, he was going to get a costume for a fool ball!
Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank.
A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a conference with two men.
"Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our native agents--"
Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two men had not lingered--if McLean had not remembered that he was an excavator--if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning wings--!
"Ever hear of a chap called Delcassé, Paul Delcassé, a French excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert about fifteen years ago."
"He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the men explained.
McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying every quarter for traces of this Delcassé.
Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin, brown volume, almost uncut....
"He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul Delcassé--I remember it very well."
Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all the strange store and loot of time.
Paul Delcassé. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the writer.
"He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance to his generation--and he becomes so now through the whim of a capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time she has decided to make active inquiries."
"But you said that Delcassé had died--"
"He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death reached his relatives in France, then nothing more. They feared that the same fever--but nothing, positively, was known.... A sad story, monsieur.... This Delcassé was young and adventurous and an ardent explorer. An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French wife to share the hazards of his expedition--"
"An ardent idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these years," he concluded with a very British air of dismissal.
But the French agent was not to be sundered from the American who remembered the book of Delcassé.
From his pocket he brought a leather case and from the case a large and ornate gold locket.
"His picture, monsieur." He pressed the spring and offered Ryder the miniature. "It was done in France before he returned on that last trip, and was left with the aunt. It is said to be a good likeness."
Ryder looked down upon the young face presented to his gaze with a feeling of sympathy for this unlucky searcher of the past who had left his own secret in the sands he had come to conquer--sympathy mingled with blank wonder at the insanity which had brought a woman with it....
McLean couldn't understand a man's doing it.
Jack Ryder couldn't understand a man's wanting to do it. Love to Ryder was incomprehensible idiocy. Woman, as far as he was concerned, had never been created. She was still a spectacle, an historical record, an uncomprehended motive.
"Nice looking chap," he commented briefly, fingering the curious old case as he handed it back.
"I'll keep up the inquiries," McLean assured them, "but, as I said, nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will know.... I don't advise your people to spend much money on the search."
"Odd, the inquiries we get," he commented to Ryder when the Frenchmen had completed their courteous farewells. "You'd think the Bank was a Bureau of Information! Yesterday there was a stir about two crazy lads who are supposed to have joined the Mecca pilgrims in disguise.... Of course our clerks are Copts and do pick up a bit and the Copts will talk.... I say, Jack, what are you doing?" he broke off to demand in astonishment, for Jack Ryder had seated himself upon a divan and was