f Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a
wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber. A little
wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face
cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves.

He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe--but no, he
was going to get a costume for a fool ball!

Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking
residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the
offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank.

A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the
tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a
conference with two men.

"Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our
native agents--"

Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two
men had not lingered--if McLean had not remembered that he was an
excavator--if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning
wings--!

"Ever hear of a chap called Delcasse, Paul Delcasse, a French
excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert
about fifteen years ago."

"He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the
men explained.

McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion
was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying
every quarter for traces of this Delcasse.

Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin,
brown volume, almost uncut....

"He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul
Delcasse--I remember it very well."

Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those
books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student
mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all
the strange store and loot of time.

Paul Delcasse. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he
remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special
agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the
writer.

"He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance
to his generation--and he becomes so now through the whim of a
capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time
she has decided to make active inquiries."

"But you said that Delcasse had died--"

"He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death
reached his relatives in France, then nothi