His eyes returned to the young American before him.  She was the unconscious answer to that future.  She would save Ryder from regret and retrospection....  In after years, looking back from a happy and well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty.

Jack must never tell this girl the story.  McLean had read somewhere of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very sure of it....  She must never receive this hurt, never know that when she had been troubling over Jack’s disappearance he had been agonizing over another girl—­that the escapade she thought so intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other—­that the young creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her rival, drawing Jack from her....

McLean would speak clearly to Ryder about this and seal his lips....  But first he would have to be found.

He became conscious that he had been a long time silent, following these thoughts, while Jinny waited.

“I’ll do everything I can to find out about that fire,” he told her.  “I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace,” he quickly amended as her face was touched with instant question.  “And I’ll see if any one in Cairo knows where he is.  Then if nothing turns up I’ll just pop out to his diggings in the morning and make sure he’s all right....  I’ll get back that night and telephone you.  And until then, not a word about it.  Much better not.”

“Not a word,” Jinny promised.  “And if you should happen to find out anything to-night—­”

“I’ll let you know at once.  Well, rather.  But don’t count on that.  The old boy is out in his tombs, dusting off his mummies.  You may get a letter, yourself, in the morning,” he threw out with heartening inspiration, “And while you are reading it, I’ll be tearing along to the infernal desert—­”

He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips.  Bright and reassured and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, she took her leave.

But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McLean’s visage.

Twenty-four hours.  Two nights and a day....  And the girl was dead and in her grave—­Moslems wasted no time before interment—­and Jack was—­where?

CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE DESERT

Clinging to that plunging horse Ryder made little attempt at first to guide the flight.  It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and Aimee in his arms while every galloping moment flung a farther distance between them and that palace of horror.

His heart was beating in a wild, triumphant exultation.  Glorious to be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world ahead!  He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him.

And Aimee was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of that sinister man and the expectation of dread things.