the subject. "You've heard of Sir Marcus Lark?" he asked.

"Of course," said I, surprised at this question sandwiched into our
affairs. Sir Marcus Lark is a man who has had his finger in many pies,
but I didn't see how he could poke one into ours. Everybody knows Sir
M. A. Lark, given a baronetcy by the Radicals some years ago in return
for services to the party--starting and running a newspaper which must
have cost him fifty thousand pounds before it began to pay. He has
financed theatres, and vegetarian restaurants; he owns cocoa
plantations and factories, and a garden city; he has a racing yacht
which once beat the German Emperor's; he owns two hotels; he has
written a book of travel; his name as a director is sought by financial
companies; he has lent money to a distressed South American government
in the making; and though the success of his enterprises has sometimes
hung in the balance for months or years, his wonderful luck seems
invariably to triumph in the end; so much so, that "Lark's Luck" has
become a well-known heading for newspaper columns, in the middle of
which his photograph is inset. At the mention of his name, the oft-seen
picture rose before my eyes--a big man, anywhere between thirty-six and
fifty--good head, large forehead, curly hair, kind eyes, pugnacious
nose, conceited smile under waxed moustache, heavy jaw, unconquerable
chin, and prize-fighter's neck and shoulders. "What has Sir Marcus Lark
to do with us?" "He's in Egypt--in Cairo just now; and--he's got our
mountain."

"Good heavens!" I stared blankly at Anthony, seeing not his dark face
under the green turban, but that everlasting, ever-smiling newspaper
block portrait. Down toppled our castle in the air, Anthony's and
mine--the shining castle which had been the lodestone of my journey to
Egypt, the secret hope and romance of our two lives, for all those