She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a chair.

He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that he had known her only by the time of her appointment.  Decidedly she must have made an odd impression!

Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly.  Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray eyes of his.  He could see that she was, well—­certainly a nice girl!

As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more.  Rather disconcertingly more!  It was not often that such white-clad apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in his receiving room.

“You wanted to see me—?” he offered mechanically.

“Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me—­of Jinny Jeffries?” began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social footing as soon as possible.

McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his head.  “He very seldom mentioned young ladies.”

“Oh—!” Jinny tried not to appear dashed.  “We are very old friends—­in America—­and of course I’ve seen a good deal of him since I’ve been in Cairo.  In fact, he is stopping now at the same hotel with us—­with my aunt and uncle and myself.”

McLean smiled.  “He said it was a tooth,” he mentioned dryly.

In Jinny’s eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were ingenuous.  “Oh, of course he has been having a time with the dentist.  That’s why he couldn’t return to his camp.  What I meant was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until—­he has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we—­that is, I—­am very much concerned about it.”

“Disappeared?  You mean, he—­”

“Just disappeared, that’s all.  He hasn’t been at the hotel—­he hasn’t been anywhere that I know of, and I haven’t heard a word from him—­so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn’t been here—­”

McLean looked off into space.  “Eh, well, he’ll turn up,” he said comfortingly.  “Jack’s erratic, you may say, in his comings and goings.  He means nothing by it....  I’ve known him do the same to me....  Any time, now; you’re likely to hear—­”

Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with brighter warmth.

“It isn’t just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean,” she took quietly distinct pains to explain.  “It’s because I am anxious—­”

“Not a need, not a need in the world.  Jack knows his way about....  He may have been called back to the diggings, you know—­if they dug up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would forget the sun was shining.”

Perhaps his caller’s burnished hair had shaped that thought.  “Jack knows his way about,” he repeated encouragingly, as one who demolishes the absurd fears of women and children.