“Masterly, you must admit.”

“Oh, I admired the beggar, even while I choked on it.  But fever—­desert burial—­two Aimees!  And the sentimental face he pulled—­he ought to have had a spot-light and wailing woodwinds.”

McLean chuckled.

“I’ll believe anything of him now,” Ryder rushed on.  “I’ll bet he murdered Delcasse and kidnapped the mother—­and now he is selling their daughter—­”

“I fancy murder’s a bit beyond our Tewfick.  That’s too thick.  He’s probably telling the truth there—­he may never have known Delcasse.  And as for the widow—­she must have been in no end of trouble with a dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her.  You’d be surprised at the things I’ve heard.  And if she looked like her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to her....  I rather like the chap, myself.”

“I love him,” Ryder snorted.  “The infernal liar—­”

“Steady now—­suppose it’s all the truth?  Nothing impossible to it.  Fact is, I rather believe it,” said McLean imperturbably.  “It hangs together.  If this girl you met thinks she’s his daughter, that’s conclusive.  She’d have some idea—­servants’ gossip or family whisperings....  And why should he have brought her up as his own?”

“No other children.  And he’d grown fond of her, of course.  If you could see her!” retorted Ryder.

“Just as well, I can’t....  And I think he could hardly have kept her in the dark....  We’d better call it a wild goose chase and say the man’s telling the truth.”

“If this girl were his daughter she couldn’t be more than fourteen years old.  And I’ve seen the girl and she’s eighteen if she’s a day—­you might take her for twenty. Fourteen!” said Ryder in repudiating scorn.

Hesitating McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the natives.

“Natives?” Ryder flung angrily back.  “This girl’s French!”

“As far as we are concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish—­and fourteen....  We can’t get around that, and you had better not forget it,” his friend quietly advised.  “We’ve done everything that we can and there is no use working yourself up....  If anybody’s to blame in this business, I don’t think it’s Tewfick—­he’s done the handsome thing by her—­but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife into the desert, and it’s too late to rag him.  Cheer up, old top, and forget it.  There’s nothing more to be done.”

It was sound advice, Jack Ryder knew it.  They had done all that they could.  McLean had been a brick.  There remained nothing now but to notify the Delcasse aunt that Tewfick Pasha claimed the child.

“And I’ve a notion, Jack,” said McLean thoughtfully, “that he might not have done that if you hadn’t rushed him so, trying to break off the marriage.  That was what frightened him.”

“I thought you said she was his own daughter,” Ryder responded indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, “She will be now, to all time.”