And at once McLean went.

* * * * *

The result was what he had foreseen.  The legation was appreciative of his interest.  That special agent had returned to France but his address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcasse would be grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send.

“Send!” repudiated Ryder hotly.  “Write to France and back—­wait for somebody to come over!  Can’t the legation do something now?”

“The legation has no authority.  They can’t take the girl away from the man who is, at any rate, her step-father.”

“They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage.  They can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals.  They can threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother’s marriage.”

“And why should they?  They may regard it as a very natural marriage.  And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize fifteen-years-ago romances.  You have a totally wrong impression of the responsibilities of foreign representatives.”

“But to let him dispose of a French girl—­”

“He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a wealthy and aristocratic general.  There can be no question of his motives—­”

“Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right—­”

Carefully McLean ignored the other’s wrath.

Patiently he explained.  “It’s not what I think, my dear fellow, it’s what the legation thinks.  There’s not a chance in the world of getting the marriage stopped.”

“Then I’ll do it myself,” declared Ryder.  “I’ll see this Tewfick Pasha and talk to him.  Tell him the money is to come to the girl only when she is single.  Tell him the French law gives the father’s representatives full charge.  Tell him that he kidnapped the mother and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her liberty.  Tell him anything.  A man with a guilty conscience can always be bluffed.”

In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his quizzical twinkle gone.  Jack was taking this thing infernally to heart....  And it was a bad business.

“You will let me do the telling,” he stated at last, grimly.  “What can be said, I’ll say.  Like a fool, I will meddle.”

And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of Tewfick Pasha.

CHAPTER VIII

TEWFICK RECEIVES

A huge Soudanese admitted them.  They found themselves in a tiled vestibule, looking through open arches into the green of a garden—­that garden, Ryder hardly needed to remind himself, with whose back door he had made such unconventional acquaintance.

Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, and, on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, gay white walls with green shutters more suggestive of a French villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Soudanese marshaled them toward the stairs upon the right.