Something between a gasp and a cry startled him into silence. He found
his host staring wildly, his lips parted, his eyes open wide.

"Where?" demanded Ainsley. "Where did you say?" His voice was so hoarse,
so strange, that they all turned and looked.

"On the Nile," repeated Mortimer. "All over Egypt. Why?"

Ainsley made no answer. Unclasping his hold, he suddenly slid down the
face of the rock, and with a bump lit on his hands and knees. With one
bound he had cleared a flower-bed. In two more he had mounted the steps
to the terrace, and in another instant had disappeared into the house.

"What happened to him?" demanded Elsie Mortimer.

"He's gone to get a gun!" exclaimed Mortimer. "But he mustn't! How can
he think of shooting them?" he cried indignantly. "I'll put a stop to
that!"

In the hall he found Ainsley surrounded by a group of startled servants.

"You get that car at the door in five minutes!" he was shouting, "and
YOU telephone the hotel to have my trunks out of the cellar and on board
the Kron Prinz Albert by midnight. Then you telephone Hoboken that I
want a cabin, and if they haven't got a cabin I want the captain's. And
tell them anyway I'm coming on board to-night, and I'm going with them
if I have to sleep on deck. And YOU," he cried, turning to Mortimer,
"take a shotgun and guard that lake, and if anybody tries to molest
those birds--shoot him! They've come from Egypt! From Polly Kirkland!
She sent them! They're a sign!"