“All of which,” McLean said sternly, in the vernacular, “amounts to nothing—­unless you can discover the girl.”

“And that, monsieur,” said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan’s guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, “that is exactly what we are here to do.”

McLean found himself looking into a thin, menacing face, capped with a red fez, a face deeply lined, marked by light, arrogant eyes and embellished with a huge, blond mustache.

“And your interest in this, monsieur?” he questioned.

“I am a friend of Sheik Hassan’s,” said the Turk loftily.  “I shall see that my friend obtains his rights.”

And in McLean’s other ear a distraught Thatcher was murmuring “That officer chap is Hamdi Bey—­a General of the Guards.  You know, Mr. McLean, this really is—­you know, it is—­”

Hamdi Bey ...  Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, befriending this sheik and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace.

Mystifying.  Mystifying and disquieting—­yes, disquieting, in the face of Jack’s alarm.  But for that alarm McLean could have believed the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi’s to revenge himself upon Ryder—­supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his masquerade or else as the prowler by night—­but Jack’s furious anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to preserve his things—­

Was it actually possible that he had that sheik’s daughter concealed in some nook or cranny of the place?

McLean told himself that it was preposterous.  It was preposterous—­but Ryder had been doing preposterous things....  And glancing at Thatcher he perceived that that perturbed and transparent gentleman was also telling himself that his suspicions were preposterous.

The search party, tiring of parley, was moving about the hall in businesslike inspection.

And then Ryder reappeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and absolute denial.

But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively.

It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with an ironic and overdone politeness.

“Ah, monsieur le general!  We meet as we parted—­in the depths!”

The general appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents of animosity.

So those two had met!  Ryder had been discovered then....  McLean tried, in futile bewilderment, to recall just what amazing thing Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared.

He kept very close at that young man’s side as the strange party moved on into the inner chamber.  The searchers were scrupulously careful of the excavator’s finds; they did not finger a frieze nor disturb a single small box of the tenderly packed potteries and beads and miniature boats, but they scraped every heap of dust to see if it concealed an entrance, they exhausted the resources of each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of Jack’s blankets and required the opening of the large chest in which the wax reproductions of the friezes were placed, awaiting transportation.