Thankfully he remembered McLean.  Kilts, that was the thing.  Tartans, the real Scotch plaids.  Some use, now, McLean’s precious sporrans....  He’d look him up at once.

Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling donkeys.

It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt’s blue and gold.  The sky was a wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber.  A little wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves.

He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe—­but no, he was going to get a costume for a fool ball!

Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank.

A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a conference with two men.

“Not the least trace,” McLean was saying.  “We’ve questioned all our native agents—­”

Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause.  If the two men had not lingered—­if McLean had not remembered that he was an excavator—­if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning wings—!

“Ever hear of a chap called Delcasse, Paul Delcasse, a French excavator?” McLean suddenly asked of him.  “Disappeared in the desert about fifteen years ago.”

“He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever,” one of the men explained.

McLean introduced him as a special agent from France.  His companion was one of the secretaries of the French legation.  They were trying every quarter for traces of this Delcasse.

Ryder’s memory darted back to old library shelves.  He saw a thin, brown volume, almost uncut....

“He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi,” he said suddenly.  “Paul Delcasse—­I remember it very well.”

Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear.  It was one of those books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all the strange store and loot of time.

Paul Delcasse.  He didn’t remember a word of the book, but he remembered that he had read it with absorption.  And now the special agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the writer.

“He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance to his generation—­and he becomes so now through the whim of a capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs.  After all this time she has decided to make active inquiries.”

“But you said that Delcasse had died—­”

“He left a wife and child.  Her letters of her husband’s death reached his relatives in France, then nothing more.  They feared that the same fever—­but nothing, positively, was known....  A sad story, monsieur....  This Delcasse was young and adventurous and an ardent explorer.  An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French wife to share the hazards of his expedition—­”