"And you went? And she came?"

"Do you suppose she sent her father?"

"You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted
grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her
veil--"

"Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily--so soon does
conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex!
"That was just as I was going--gone, in fact. I looked back and she
had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face--I saw her
as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a
picture of her. She is Delcassé's daughter and she doesn't know it.
Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk--"

"Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been
thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love
affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?"

"Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that
the father was so in love that he never married again."

"H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of
pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and
tattlers. However--as to this Delcassé inheritance, I'll just notify
the French legation--"

"We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to