A
command and the camels rose, mouthing their complaints. Youssef waved,
and the caravan raced away with long, smooth strides across the desert.

Rick turned to Hassan. "Are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

The dragoman put a hand to his head. "Hurts like fire, but I okay. You?"

"I'm fine."

"What we do now?"

Rick saw the camels disappear behind a dune, then emerge again. It was a
pretty, romantic picture, but one he couldn't appreciate.

"We wait," he told Hassan. "We wait, and I guess we hope. There's
nothing else we can do."

CHAPTER XV

The Cat Comes Back

The hands of the control-room clock crept up to five. Scotty asked an
Egyptian technician to watch the tapes for a moment, then went to the
telephone and called the hotel.

It wasn't like Rick to be late. Scotty thought his pal might have
decided to take a nap and had failed to wake up in time, but he had
little faith in the idea. Rick wasn't a nap taker. More likely,
something had happened at the museum.

The hotel desk rang the room without success, and to Scotty's question,
the clerk answered that he had not seen Mr. Brant or Hassan since
morning.

Scotty debated calling the museum, and decided against it. He went to
Parnell Winston, who was supervising the transfer of information from
the Sanborn tracings to graph paper.

"Rick hasn't shown," Scotty said bluntly. "I'm worried. He's never
late."

Winston glanced up. "Could Hassan's car have broken down?"

"Could be, but I don't think so. Rick could have gotten a taxi anywhere
on the route. Besides, he was going to the museum to get the Egyptian
cat. Something might have happened."

The scientist knew the two boys from long association, and they had kept
him informed of their various adventures. In spite of his preoccupation
with the project he had been interested in their cat mystery and had
been keeping an eye on them. Winston hadn't noticed that Rick was late,
but he was worried too, now that it was called to his attention.

"Go find him, Scotty. Dr. Kerama's driver can take you. I'll have one of
the others watch the tapes. But get back as soon as you can."

Scotty planned his search on the way into town. He had the car take him
to the museum as soon as they arrived in Cairo. The museum was closed,
but questioning of the guard disclosed that Rick had been there, and had
"found" an unusual statue wrapped in newspaper and left in an urn. It
was a new statue, the guard capt