He countered my query with another of:

"What do _you_ think?"

"I? Oh! although I have no right to say so, I don't think at all. I
am quite sure that she was _not_ drowned; that she is living at this
moment."

"Where?"

"As to that you had better inquire of our friends, Harût and Marût," I
answered dryly.

"What have you to go on, Quatermain? There is no clue."

"On the contrary I hold that there are a good many clues. The whole
English part of the story in which we were concerned, and the threats
those mysterious persons uttered are the first and greatest of these
clues. The second is the fact that your hiring of the dahabeeyah
regardless of expense was known a long time before your arrival in
Egypt, for I suppose you did so in your own name, which is not
exactly that of Smith or Brown. The third is your wife's sleep-walking
propensities, which would have made it quite easy for her to be drawn
ashore under some kind of mesmeric influence. The fourth is that you had
seen Arabs mounted on camels upon the banks of the Nile. The fifth is
the heavy sleep you say held everybody on board that particular night,
which suggests to me that your food may have been drugged. The sixth is
the apathy displayed by those employed in the search, which suggests to
me that some person or persons in authority may have been bribed, as is
common in the East, or perhaps frightened with threats of bewitchment.