"The signorina may rely upon my absolute discretion," declared the man in a low, intense voice.

"_Benissimo_," was her hurried response. "Return here in half an hour, and I will give you my answer. It is hard, cruel, inhuman of them to treat me thus! But it is, I suppose, only what I must expect. I am only a woman, and I must make the sacrifice."

And with a wave of her small, ungloved hand she dismissed him, and took a path which led through the public garden back to the hotel by a shorter cut.

Meanwhile Waldron strode on past the railway station to the quay, glanced at his watch, and then, half an hour later, after he had dispatched his telegram he was lurking in the shadows at that same spot.

He watched Lola hand a letter to the stranger, and wish him "_Addio e buon viaggio_!"

Then he followed the bearded man down to the station, where, from a European official of whom he made a confidential inquiry, he learnt that the stranger had arrived in a.s.souan from Cairo only two hours before, bearing a return ticket to Europe by the mail route via Port Said and Brindisi.

With curiosity he watched the Italian leave by the mail for Cairo ten minutes later, and then turned away and retraced his steps to the Cataract Hotel, plunged deep in thought.

There was a mystery somewhere--a strange and very grave mystery.

What could be that message of such extreme importance and secrecy that it could not be trusted to the post?

Who was old Gigleux of whom Mademoiselle Duprez went in such fear? Was she really what she represented herself to be?

No. He felt somehow a.s.sured that all was not as it should be. A mystery surrounded both uncle and niece, while the angular Miss Lambert remained as silent and impenetrable as the sphinx.

Diplomat and man of the world as was Hubert Waldron--a man who had run the whole gamut of life in the gay centres of Europe--he was naturally suspicious, for the incident of that night seemed inexplicable.

Something most secret and important must be in progress to necessitate the travelling of a special messenger from Europe far away into Upper Egypt, merely to deliver a letter and obtain a response.

"Yes," he murmured to himself as he pa.s.sed through the portals of the hotel, which were thrown open to him by two statuesque Nubian servants, who bowed low as he pa.s.sed. "Yes; there are some curious features about this affair. I will watch and discover the truth. Lola is in some secret and imminent peril. Of that I feel absolutely convinced."

CHAPTER THREE.

IN THE HOLY OF HOLIES.

Five days later.

Boulos, the faithful Egyptian dragoman, in his red fez and long caftan of yellow silk reaching to his heels, stood leaning over the bows of the small white steamer which was slowly wending its way around the many curves of the mighty river which lay between the Island of Philae and the Second Cataract at Wady Haifa, the gate of the Sudan.

No railway runs through that wild desert of rock and sand, and the road to Khartoum lies by water over those sharp rocks and ever-shifting shoals where navigation is always dangerous, and progress only possible by daylight.

Boulos, the dark, pleasant-faced man who is such an inveterate gossip, who knows much more of Egyptology than his parrot-talk to travellers, and who is popular with all those who go to and fro between Cairo and Khartoum, stood chatting in Arabic with the white-bearded, black-faced _reis_, or pilot.

The latter, wearing a white turban, was wrapped in a red cloak though the sun was blazing. He squatted upon a piece of carpet in the bows, idly smoking a cigarette from dawn till sundown, and navigating the vessel by raising his right or left hand as signal to the man at the helm.

A Nile steamer has no captain. The Nubian _reis_ is supreme over the native crew, and being a man of vast experience of the river, knows by the appearance of the water where lie the ever-shifting sand-banks.

"Oh yes," remarked the _reis_ in Arabic; "by Allah's grace we shall anchor at Abu Simbel by sunset. It is now just past the noon," added the bearded old man--who looked like a prophet--as he glanced upward at the burning sun.

"And when shall we leave?" asked the dragoman.

"At noon to-morrow--if Allah willeth it," replied the old man.

"To-night the crew will give a fantasia. Will you tell the pa.s.sengers."

"If it be thy will," responded Boulos, drawing at his excellent cigarette.

"How farest thou this journey?"

"Very well. The Prophet hath given me grace to sell several statuettes and scarabs. The little American hath bought my bronze of Isis."

"I congratulate thee, O wise one among the infidels," laughed the old man, raising his left hand to alter the course of the vessel. "Thy bronze hath lain for many moons--eh?"

"Since the last Ramadan. And now, with Allah's help, I have sold it to the American for a thousand piastres."

Old Melek the _reis_ grunted, and thoughtfully rolled another cigarette, which he handed unstuck to his friend, the sign of Arab courtesy.

Boulos ran his tongue along it, and raising his hand to his fez in thanks, lit it with great gusto, glancing up to the deck where his charges were lolling beneath the awning.

Lola, in white, and wearing her sun-helmet, leaned over the rail and called in her broken English:

"Boulos, when do we arrive at Abu Simbel?"

"At ze sunset, mees," was the dragoman's smiling reply. "To-morrow morning, at haf-pas tree we land, and we watch ze sun rise from inside ze gr-reat Tem-pel of Rameses." Then raising his voice, so that all could hear, as is the habit of dragomans: "Ze gr-reat Tem-pel is cut in ze rock and made by Rameses to hees gr-reat gawd, Ra, gawd of ze sun.

In ze front are fo-our colossi--gr-reat carved statues of Rameses seated. Zees, la-dees and gen'lemens, you will be able to see first as we come round ze bend of ze Nile about seex o'clock. To-morrow morning we land at haf-pas tree, and ze sight is one of ze grandest in all our Egypt."

"Half-past three!" echoed Chester Dawson, who was sitting in a deck-chair at Edna's side. "I shall still be in my berth, I hope. No Temple of Rameses would get me up before sunrise."

"Say, you're real lazy," declared the buxom American girl. "I'll be right there--you bet."

"But is the old ruin worth it? We've seen the wonderful works of Rameses all up the Nile."

"Waal--is it worth coming to Egypt at all?" she asked in her native drawl. "Guess it is--better than Eu-rope--even if you're fed up by it."

"Oh, I don't know. This beastly heat makes me sick," and he gave a vigorous stroke with his horsehair fly-whisk with which each traveller was provided. Beelzebub a.s.suredly lived in Egypt, for was he not the G.o.d of flies. Everything has a G.o.d in Egypt.

Boulos had resumed his comfortable chat with Melek, the _reis_. His thousand piastre deal of that morning had fully satisfied him. Not that he ever overcharged the travellers for any antiques which he sold them.

As everyone on the Nile knows--from Cairo to far Khartoum--Boulos the laughing, easy-going though gorgeously attired dragoman, is a scrupulously honest dealer. He is a friend of the greatest Egyptologists in the world and, unlike the common run of dragomans, has studied Egyptian history, and possesses quite a remarkable knowledge of hieroglyphics. Many a well-known European professor has sat at the knee of Boulos, and many an antique is now in one or other of the European national collections which originally pa.s.sed through the hands of the ever-faithful Boulos.

Waldron was sipping an innocuous drink composed of Evian water with a lime squeezed into it, and chatting in French with old Jules Gigleux, pa.s.sing one of those usual mornings of laziness, away from the worries of letters and newspapers, which are so delightful up the Nile.

Beneath the wide awning the soft, hot breeze pleasantly fanned them, while away on the banks rose the feathery palms on the tiny green strip of cultivated mud, sometimes only a few feet in width, and then the desert--that great glaring waste of brown sand--stretching away to the horizon where the sky shone like burnished copper.

Mademoiselle, as full of mischief as ever, was the very life and soul of that smart party of moneyed folk which included two English peers, three American millionaires, an Austrian banker, a wealthy Russian prince, and two Members of Parliament who had paired. It had been whispered that she was daughter of Duprez, the millionaire sugar-refiner of Lyons; and, as everyone knows, the sugar of the Maison Duprez is used in nearly every household throughout France.

Yet Waldron had heard quite a different story from her own lips while they had been seated together on deck the previous evening drinking coffee.

"Ah?" she had sighed, "if I were only wealthy like the several other girls of this party, it would be different. Perhaps I could break away from uncle, and remain independent. But, alas! I cannot. I owe everything to him--I am dependent upon him for all I have."

This surprised Hubert considerably. Hitherto he had believed her to be the daughter of a wealthy man, because Miss Lambert showed her such marked deference. But such apparently was not the fact. Indeed she had declared later on to Waldron that she was very poor, and to her eccentric old uncle she was indebted for everything she received.

Hers was a curious, complex character. Sometimes she would sit and chat and flirt violently with him--for by her woman's intuition she knew full well that he admired her greatly--while at others she would scarcely utter a word to him.

Hubert Waldron detested old Gigleux. Even though he sat chatting and laughing with him that morning, he held him in supreme contempt for his constant espionage upon his niece. The old fellow seemed ubiquitous.