For a full twenty minutes or so he pondered, uncertain what reply to send. In any case, even if he left for London on the following morning, he could not arrive at Charing Cross for fully ten days.
At last he took up his cane and hat, and descending in the lift, crossed the great hotel garden, making his way down the short hill towards the town. It was then nearly eleven oclock, and all was silent and deserted except for the armed Arab watchman in his hooded cloak. On his right as he walked lay a small public garden, a prettily laid out space rising on the huge boulders which form the gorge of the Nile a place filled by high feathery palms, flaming poinsettias, and a wealth of tropical flowers.
But as he passed the entrance in the shadow there suddenly broke upon his ears a womans voice, speaking rapidly in Italian a language with which he was well conversant.
He halted instantly. The voice was Lolas! In the shadow he could just distinguish two forms, that of a man and a woman.
He drew back in breathless amazement. Mademoiselles eagerness to return across from Elephantine was now explained. She had kept a secret tryst.
As he watched, he heard her speaking quickly and angrily in an imperative tone. The man was standing in the full moonlight, and Waldron could see him quite plainly a dark, short-bearded man of middle-age and middle-height, wearing a soft felt Tyrolese hat.
He made no response, but only bowed low at his unceremonious dismissal.
The stranger was about to leave her when suddenly, as though on reflection, she exclaimed, still speaking in perfect Italian:
No. Return here in half an hour. I will go back to the hotel and write my reply. Until then do not be seen. Gigleux must never know that you have been here you understand? I know that you will remain my friend, though everyones hand is now raised against me, but if Gigleux suspected that you had been here he would cable home at once and then who knows what might not happen! I could never return. I would rather kill myself?
The signorina may rely upon my absolute discretion, declared the man in a low, intense voice.
Benissimo, was her hurried response. Return here in half an hour, and I will give you my answer. It is hard, cruel, inhuman of them to treat me thus! But it is, I suppose, only what I must expect. I am only a woman, and I must make the sacrifice.
And with a wave of her small, ungloved hand she dismissed him, and took a path which led through the public garden back to the hotel by a shorter cut.
Meanwhile Waldron strode on past the railway station to the quay, glanced at his watch, and then, half an hour later, after he had dispatched his telegram he was lurking in the shadows at that same spot.
He watched Lola hand a letter to the stranger, and wish him Addio e buon viaggio!
Then he followed the bearded man down to the station, where, from a European official of whom he made a confidential inquiry, he learnt that the stranger had arrived in Assouan from Cairo only two hours before, bearing a return ticket to Europe by the mail route via Port Said and Brindisi.
With curiosity he watched the Italian leave by the mail for Cairo ten minutes later, and then turned away and retraced his steps to the Cataract Hotel, plunged deep in thought.
There was a mystery somewhere a strange and very grave mystery.
What could be that message of such extreme importance and secrecy that it could not be trusted to the post?
Who was old Gigleux of whom Mademoiselle Duprez went in such fear? Was she really what she represented herself to be?
No. He felt somehow assured that all was not as it should be. A mystery surrounded both uncle and niece, while the angular Miss Lambert remained as silent and impenetrable as the sphinx.
Diplomat and man of the world as was Hubert Waldron a man who had run the whole gamut of life in the gay centres of Europe he was naturally suspicious, for the incident of that night seemed inexplicable.
Something most secret and important must be in progress to necessitate the travelling of a special messenger from Europe far away into Upper Egypt, merely to deliver a letter and obtain a response.
Yes, he murmured to himself as he passed through the portals of the hotel, which were thrown open to him by two statuesque Nubian servants, who bowed low as he passed. Yes; there are some curious features about this affair. I will watch and discover the truth. Lola is in some secret and imminent peril. Of that I feel absolutely convinced.
Chapter Three.
In the Holy of Holies
Five days later.
Boulos, the faithful Egyptian dragoman, in his red fez and long caftan of yellow silk reaching to his heels, stood leaning over the bows of the small white steamer which was slowly wending its way around the many curves of the mighty river which lay between the Island of Philae and the Second Cataract at Wady Haifa, the gate of the Sudan.
No railway runs through that wild desert of rock and sand, and the road to Khartoum lies by water over those sharp rocks and ever-shifting shoals where navigation is always dangerous, and progress only possible by daylight.
Boulos, the dark, pleasant-faced man who is such an inveterate gossip, who knows much more of Egyptology than his parrot-talk to travellers, and who is popular with all those who go to and fro between Cairo and Khartoum, stood chatting in Arabic with the white-bearded, black-faced reis, or pilot.
The latter, wearing a white turban, was wrapped in a red cloak though the sun was blazing. He squatted upon a piece of carpet in the bows, idly smoking a cigarette from dawn till sundown, and navigating the vessel by raising his right or left hand as signal to the man at the helm.
A Nile steamer has no captain. The Nubian reis is supreme over the native crew, and being a man of vast experience of the river, knows by the appearance of the water where lie the ever-shifting sand-banks.
Oh yes, remarked the reis in Arabic; by Allahs grace we shall anchor at Abu Simbel by sunset. It is now just past the noon, added the bearded old man who looked like a prophet as he glanced upward at the burning sun.
And when shall we leave? asked the dragoman.
At noon to-morrow if Allah willeth it, replied the old man. To-night the crew will give a fantasia. Will you tell the passengers.
If it be thy will, responded Boulos, drawing at his excellent cigarette.
How farest thou this journey?
Very well. The Prophet hath given me grace to sell several statuettes and scarabs. The little American hath bought my bronze of Isis.
I congratulate thee, O wise one among the infidels, laughed the old man, raising his left hand to alter the course of the vessel. Thy bronze hath lain for many moons eh?
Since the last Ramadan. And now, with Allahs help, I have sold it to the American for a thousand piastres.
Old Melek the reis grunted, and thoughtfully rolled another cigarette, which he handed unstuck to his friend, the sign of Arab courtesy. Boulos ran his tongue along it, and raising his hand to his fez in thanks, lit it with great gusto, glancing up to the deck where his charges were lolling beneath the awning.
Lola, in white, and wearing her sun-helmet, leaned over the rail and called in her broken English:
Boulos, when do we arrive at Abu Simbel?
At ze sunset, mees, was the dragomans smiling reply. To-morrow morning, at haf-pas tree we land, and we watch ze sun rise from inside ze gr-reat Tem-pel of Rameses. Then raising his voice, so that all could hear, as is the habit of dragomans: Ze gr-reat Tem-pel is cut in ze rock and made by Rameses to hees gr-reat gawd, Ra, gawd of ze sun. In ze front are fo-our colossi gr-reat carved statues of Rameses seated. Zees, la-dees and genlemens, you will be able to see first as we come round ze bend of ze Nile about seex oclock. To-morrow morning we land at haf-pas tree, and ze sight is one of ze grandest in all our Egypt.
Half-past three! echoed Chester Dawson, who was sitting in a deck-chair at Ednas side. I shall still be in my berth, I hope. No Temple of Rameses would get me up before sunrise.
Say, youre real lazy, declared the buxom American girl. Ill be right there you bet.
But is the old ruin worth it? Weve seen the wonderful works of Rameses all up the Nile.
Waal is it worth coming to Egypt at all? she asked in her native drawl. Guess it is better than Eu-rope even if youre fed up by it.
Oh, I dont know. This beastly heat makes me sick, and he gave a vigorous stroke with his horsehair fly-whisk with which each traveller was provided. Beelzebub assuredly lived in Egypt, for was he not the god of flies. Everything has a god in Egypt.
Boulos had resumed his comfortable chat with Melek, the reis. His thousand piastre deal of that morning had fully satisfied him. Not that he ever overcharged the travellers for any antiques which he sold them. As everyone on the Nile knows from Cairo to far Khartoum Boulos the laughing, easy-going though gorgeously attired dragoman, is a scrupulously honest dealer. He is a friend of the greatest Egyptologists in the world and, unlike the common run of dragomans, has studied Egyptian history, and possesses quite a remarkable knowledge of hieroglyphics. Many a well-known European professor has sat at the knee of Boulos, and many an antique is now in one or other of the European national collections which originally passed through the hands of the ever-faithful Boulos.
Waldron was sipping an innocuous drink composed of Evian water with a lime squeezed into it, and chatting in French with old Jules Gigleux, passing one of those usual mornings of laziness, away from the worries of letters and newspapers, which are so delightful up the Nile.
Beneath the wide awning the soft, hot breeze pleasantly fanned them, while away on the banks rose the feathery palms on the tiny green strip of cultivated mud, sometimes only a few feet in width, and then the desert that great glaring waste of brown sand stretching away to the horizon where the sky shone like burnished copper.
Mademoiselle, as full of mischief as ever, was the very life and soul of that smart party of moneyed folk which included two English peers, three American millionaires, an Austrian banker, a wealthy Russian prince, and two Members of Parliament who had paired. It had been whispered that she was daughter of Duprez, the millionaire sugar-refiner of Lyons; and, as everyone knows, the sugar of the Maison Duprez is used in nearly every household throughout France.
Yet Waldron had heard quite a different story from her own lips while they had been seated together on deck the previous evening drinking coffee.
Ah? she had sighed, if I were only wealthy like the several other girls of this party, it would be different. Perhaps I could break away from uncle, and remain independent. But, alas! I cannot. I owe everything to him I am dependent upon him for all I have.
This surprised Hubert considerably. Hitherto he had believed her to be the daughter of a wealthy man, because Miss Lambert showed her such marked deference. But such apparently was not the fact. Indeed she had declared later on to Waldron that she was very poor, and to her eccentric old uncle she was indebted for everything she received.
Hers was a curious, complex character. Sometimes she would sit and chat and flirt violently with him for by her womans intuition she knew full well that he admired her greatly while at others she would scarcely utter a word to him.
Hubert Waldron detested old Gigleux. Even though he sat chatting and laughing with him that morning, he held him in supreme contempt for his constant espionage upon his niece. The old fellow seemed ubiquitous. He turned up in every corner of the steamer, always feigning to take no notice of his nieces constant companionship with the diplomat, and yet his sharp, shrewd eyes took in everything.
On more than one occasion the Englishman was upon the point of demanding outright why that irritating observation was so constantly kept, nevertheless with a diplomats discretion, he realised that a judicious silence was best.
That long, blazing day passed slowly, till at last the sun sank westward over the desert in a flame of green and gold. Then the thirty or so passengers stood upon the deck waiting in patience till, suddenly rounding the sharp bend of the river, they saw upon the right carved in the high, sandstone cliff the greatest and most wonderful sight in all Nubia.
Lola was at the moment leaning over the rail, while Waldron stood idly smoking at her side.
See! he cried suddenly. Over there! Those four colossal seated figures guarding the entrance of the temple which faces the sunrise. That is Abu Simbel.
How perfectly marvellous! gasped the girl, astounded at the wonderful monument of Rameses the Great.
The temple is hewn in the solid rock a temple about the size of Westminster Abbey in London. In the Holy of holies are four more seated figures in the darkness, and to-morrow as we stand in there at dawn, the sun, as it rises, will shine in at the temple door and gradually light up the faces of those images, until they glow and seem to become living beings surely the most impressive sight of all the wonders of Egypt.
I am longing to see it, replied the girl, her eyes fixed in fascination at the far-off colossi seated there gazing with such calm, contented expression over the Nile waters, now blood-red in the still and gorgeous desert sunset.
On the arid banks there was no sign of life, or even of vegetation. All was desert, rock, sand, and desolation. Where was the great, palpitating civilisation which had existed there in the days of Rameses, the cultured world which worshipped the great god, Ra, in that most wonderful of all temples? Gone, every trace save the place where the sun god was worshipped, swept out of existence, effaced, and forgotten.
Over the vessel a great grey vulture hovered with slowly flapping wings. Then from the bows came a low chant, and the passengers craning their necks below, saw that the black-faced crew had turned towards Mecca and sunk upon their knees, including even the gorgeous Boulos himself, and with many genuflexions were adoring Allah.
Allah is great. Allah is merciful. He is the One, they cried in their low, musical Arabic. There is no god but Allah!
The sun sank and twilight came swiftly, as it does in the glowing, mystic East. And the white-bearded reis, his prayers finished, pushed on the steamer more quickly so as to anchor opposite Abu Simbel before darkness fell. The excitement among the passengers grew intense, for, on the morrow, ere the first pink of the dawn, the travellers were to stand within that rock-hewn temple, the most wonderful of all the works of the Pharaohs.
The evening proved a merry one, for after dinner, with the vessel anchored in mid-stream to obviate thieves opposite the great temple, the Nubian crew gave a fantasia, or native song and dance, for the benefit of the travellers.
On each trip from Shellal to Wady Haifa this was usual, for European travellers like to hear the weird native music, and the crooning desert songs in which Allah is praised so incessantly. Besides, a collection is made afterwards, and the sturdy, hard-working crew are benefited by many piastres.
On the lower deck, beneath the brilliant stars the black-faced toilers of the Nile beat their tom-toms vigorously and chanted weirdly while the passengers stood leaning over, watching and applauding. The crew squatted in a circle, and one after the other sprang up and performed a wild, mad dance while their companions kept time by clapping their hands or strumming upon their big earthenware tom-toms.