Lucky, that’s what he’d been.  And it would be a lesson to him.  Never again.  No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their harem entrances.  No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden.  No more—­

Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores.  Recollection had a way of stirring an unpleasant tumult.

But it was all over.  He had forgotten it—­he would forget it.  He would forget her.  Work, that was the thing.  Normal, sensible, every day work.

But there was no joy in this tonic work.  Somewhere, between a night and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of this very tomb.

For this tomb was his own find.  It had been found long before by the plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had plundered the Persian remains—­but between and after those findings the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world, choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young girl in the ante-room.  The tombs had been cleared now, down almost to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft.

It was really an important find.  Although much plundered, the walls were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls were exceptional examples.  And there were some very interesting things to decipher.  A scholar and an explorer could well be enthusiastic.

But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic.  Even when his groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance.  Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it off.  A gleam of gold shone in his hand.  But it was no ancient amulet or necklace or breast guard—­nor was it any bit of the harness of the plundering Persians.  It was a locket, very heavily and ornately carved.

He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before—­that subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the theories of reincarnationists—­and then, quite suddenly, memory came to his aid.

In McLean’s office.  That day of the masquerade.  Those visiting Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him.  Of course the thing reminded him—­

And it was remarkably alike.  The same thick oval, the same ponderous effect of the coat of arms—­if it should prove the same coat of arms that would be a clue!

With his mind still piecing the recollection and surmise together his fingers pressed the spring.  There was a miniature within, but it was not the picture of Monsieur Delcasse.  Ryder was looking down upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes and wistful lips—­dark eyes, with a lovely arch of brow, and rose-red lips with haunting curves.