nd they clung consistently to a story
which absolved them from responsibility. Kinsmen of theirs in Korosko,
hearing that they were travelling to Assouan, had asked them to take
charge of the wounded man, who was a stranger to them, and they had
consented. Calder could get nothing more explicit from them than this
statement, however closely he questioned them. He had under his hand the
information which he desired, the news of Harry Feversham for which
Durrance asked by every mail, but it was hidden from him in a locked
book. He stood beside the helpless man upon the angareb. There he was,
eager enough to speak, but the extremity of weakness to which he had
sunk laid a finger upon his lips. All that Calder could do was to see
him safely bestowed within the hospital at Assouan. "Will he recover?"
Calder asked, and the doctors shook their heads in doubt. There was a
chance perhaps, a very slight chance; but at the best, recovery would be
slow.

Calder continued upon his journey to Cairo and Europe. An opportunity of
helping Harry Feversham had slipped away; for the Arab who could not
even speak his name was Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe, and his
presence wounded and helpless upon the Nile steamer between Korosko and
Assouan meant that Harry Feversham's carefully laid plan for the rescue
of Colonel Trench had failed.

CHAPTER XXV

LIEUTENANT SUTCH COMES OFF THE HALF-PAY LIST

At the time when Calder, disappointed at his failure to obtain news of
Feversham from the one man who possessed it, stepped into a carriage of
the train at Assouan, Lieutenant Sutch was driving along a high white
road of Hampshire across a common of heather and gorse; and he too was
troubled on Harry Feversham's account. Like many a man who lives much
alone, Lieutenant Sutch had fallen into the habit of speaking his
thoughts aloud. And as he drove slowly and reluctantly forward, more
than once he said to himself: "I foresaw there would be trouble. From
the beginning I foresaw there would be trouble."

The ridge of hill along which he drove dipped suddenly to a hollow.
Sutch saw the road run steeply down in front of him between forests of
pines to a little railway station. The sight of the rails gleaming
bright in the afternoon sunlight, and the telegraph poles running away
in a straight line until they seemed to huddle together in the distance,
increased Sutch's discomposure. He reined his pony in, and sat staring
with a frown at the