I have not tried to give any detailed account of my journeys, nor of the alternate feelings of hope and despair that possessed me.  This must be left to the imagination of my readers.  Let them remember the circumstances of the story as I have related them, let them think of how much depended on my discovery of Kaffar, let them also try to fancy something of my feelings, and then they will be able to guess at my weary nights and anxious days, they will know how feverishly I hurried from port to port and from town to town.  Anyhow, I will not try to describe them, for I should miserably fail.

Cairo was comparatively empty.  The heat had driven the tourists away to colder climes.  The waiters in the hotels lolled around, with little or nothing to do.  Only a few guests required their attendance.  Everything was very quiet.  The burning sun fairly scorched the leaves of the acacia trees, which grew everywhere.  The Nile was exceedingly low, and water was comparatively scarce.  The older part of Cairo was simply unbearable; the little Koptic community dwelling in the low huts, which reeked with dirt and vermin, would, one would have thought, have been glad to have died.

I had no success in Cairo.  A dozen times I was buoyed up with hopes, a dozen times my hopes were destroyed, leaving me more despairing than ever.  In spite of the terrible heat, all that could be done I did.  Recommended by an hotel proprietor, I engaged two of the shrewdest men in this wonderful city to try and find Kaffar, but they could discover no trace of him.  I went to mosques, to temples, to bazaars—­in vain.  If he were in Cairo, he was hiding.

Oh, the weary work, the dreadful uncertainty!  Hoping, despairing, ever toiling, ever searching, yet never achieving!  The months were slipping by.  It was now August, and I was no nearer finding him than when I started.  Must I give up, then?  Should I renounce my life’s love?  Should I yield my darling to Voltaire?  Never!

I formed a new resolution.  I would go back to England.  Doubtless I had gone clumsily to work, and thus my failure would be explained.  When once back in London, I would engage the cleverest detectives the city could boast of, and I would state the whole case to them.  Perchance they could do what I had failed to accomplish.  This determination I at once carried into practice, and in a little more than a week I again saw the white cliffs of Dover.  I did not rest.  Arriving at Victoria, I drove straight to Scotland Yard, and in an hour later two of the most highly recommended officers of the London detective police force were in possession of all the facts that I could give them that would lead to the discovery of the Egyptian, providing he lived.

Then I drove back to my rooms in Gower Street, weary and sad, yet not hopeless.  There were four months in which to act.  Two clever men were at work, while, thank God, I was free to act and to think.