Next, his eager fancy sought to plumb the business these two had together in Egypt—­in the Desert.  For the Desert, he felt convinced, had brought them out.  But here, though he constructed numerous explanations, another barrier stopped him.  Because he knew.  This woman was in touch with that aspect of ancient Egypt he himself had ever sought in vain; and not merely with stones the sand had buried so deep, but with the meanings they once represented, buried so utterly by the sands of later thought.

And here, being ignorant, he found no clue that could lead to any satisfactory result, for he possessed no knowledge that might guide him.  He floundered—­until Fate helped him.  And the instant Fate helped him, the warning and presentiment he had dismissed as fanciful, became real again.  He hesitated.  Caution acted.  He would think twice before taking steps to form acquaintance.  “Better not,” thought whispered.  “Better leave them alone, this queer couple.  They’re after things that won’t do you any good.”  This idea of mischief, almost of danger, in their purposes was oddly insistent; for what could possibly convey it?  But, while he hesitated, Fate, who sent the warning, pushed him at the same time into the circle of their lives:  at first tentatively—­he might still have escaped; but soon urgently—­curiosity led him inexorably towards the end.

IV

It was so simple a manoeuvre by which Fate began the innocent game.  The woman left a couple of books behind her on the table one night, and Henriot, after a moment’s hesitation, took them out after her.  He knew the titles—­The House of the Master, and The House of the Hidden Places, both singular interpretations of the Pyramids that once had held his own mind spellbound.  Their ideas had been since disproved, if he remembered rightly, yet the titles were a clue—­a clue to that imaginative part of his mind that was so busy constructing theories and had found its stride.  Loose sheets of paper, covered with notes in a minute handwriting, lay between the pages; but these, of course, he did not read, noticing only that they were written round designs of various kinds—­intricate designs.

He discovered Vance in a corner of the smoking-lounge.  The woman had disappeared.

Vance thanked him politely.  “My aunt is so forgetful sometimes,” he said, and took them with a covert eagerness that did not escape the other’s observation.  He folded up the sheets and put them carefully in his pocket.  On one there was an ink-sketched map, crammed with detail, that might well have referred to some portion of the Desert.  The points of the compass stood out boldly at the bottom.  There were involved geometrical designs again.  Henriot saw them.  They exchanged, then, the commonplaces of conversation, but these led to nothing further.  Vance was nervous and betrayed impatience.  He presently excused himself