And yet men had been thrown into rivers—­this very river.  And men had disappeared from just such palaces as this.  There was the story about young Monkton.  He knew it perfectly; he had reminded himself of it the last evening while he reflected upon this escapade, but he had never actually appreciated the peculiar poignancy of the thing until now.

Monkton had met—­so rumor reported—­a Turkish lady of position, flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge.  There had been a meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in her harem.

He had never boasted about the tea.  No one had ever seen Monkton again and he was generally reported, after a stifled inquiry, to have been thrown from his horse in the desert, or spilled out of his sailing canoe.

The government, English or Egyptian, assumed no interest in the matter of gentlemen found in other gentlemen’s harems.

There were other stories, too.  There was one of a little Viennese actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor of a rash young American girl, detained for days....

Ryder had always known these stories.  They were part of the gossip and thrill of Cairo.  But he had never till now realized how exquisitely possible was their occurrence.

Anything, everything might happen in these hidden, secret chambers.  These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who had reared these stones.  This black upon his heels might have been the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph—­he might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance of Al Raschid.

He told himself that it was no time to think of the past.  His business—­acutely—­was the present.  If only he could get his hands untied!  If only he could get those untied hands upon that demoniac Turk!

But, strain as he could upon the knots, they held.

It seemed to him that they had been walking for an interminable distance, in odd, roundabout ways.  Once they had stopped and he had involuntarily glanced back over his shoulder, but at a word from the general he had kept his head forward again, while he heard the black behind him gathering something that clinked.  Later, a stolen glance had revealed the eunuch with some tools in one hand and bag slung over his shoulder.

The bag disquieted him.  Bags filled a foreboding place in the Eastern literature of vengeance.  He wondered if he were to go into the river in that bag, with the tools for weight.

He decided, feeling now a very odd and definite disturbance in the region of his stomach, that he would tell that general that he was a cousin of the late Lord Cromer and a nephew of Lord Kitchener.  Something insistent would have to be done about this.