Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the
silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard
morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was
hot and dusty.

"You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that
special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he
was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of
a clue--eh, what?"

"It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this
Frenchman was working, for the first thing--"

"Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that
tomb."

"Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been
stolen and hidden--but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely
that this was the very tomb where Delcassé was working at the time
of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous
excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern
got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of
the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcassé wrote his
book about--looks very much as if it might be by the same artist.
There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical
drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail--but there,
you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland.
You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high,
and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my