"No, not Iris." Unconsciously Anstice breathed a sigh of relief and the older man glanced at him curiously. "It is Bruce--my son-in-law--who's ill; and I've come down here to find a doctor. Couldn't get one in Cairo--it seems the pilgrims have just returned from Mecca bringing their pet cholera along with them, and the city's got a scare--so I came down here to meet the boat, meaning to bribe the ship's surgeon to come back into the desert with me. If he wouldn't respond to bakshish I should have tried kidnapping," finished Sir Richard grimly, and Anstice smiled.
"No need to do that, sir. I'm here, and I'm ready and willing to do all you require. But first, hadn't I better put in a claim to my belongings? It seems to me these rascals would think precious little of making off with all the lot!"
"Yes--better let me see to it for you," said Sir Richard quickly. "We've not too much time for the train to Cairo as it is. If you will go and bespeak an arabeah I'll get your baggage."
And as Anstice moved to obey, a very tumult in his heart, Sir Richard turned back to the wildly-shouting crowd and succeeded in reclaiming Anstice's portmanteau and Gladstone bag from the clutches of the blue-robed fiends who fought one another for its possession.
When they were clear of the quay, driving behind the two long-tailed little horses along the glaring streets, beneath the thinly-leaved and dusty trees, Anstice turned to Sir Richard interrogatively.
"Now, sir, can you tell me what's wrong? Mr. Cheniston is ill, you say. Do you know the nature of his illness?"
"Enteric, I'm afraid," Sir Richard informed him gravely. "He went on a shooting expedition a week or two ago with the rich Egyptian for whom he has been carrying through a big irrigation job, and one day, when, through a miscalculation, the wine and provisions did not turn up, the party lunched at a mud-village on eggs and coffee. Being particularly thirsty Bruce indulged in a small glass of water with slices of citron, and although the host's servants swore by the Beard of the Prophet and so on through all their most sacred oaths that they had boiled the water first, the odds are that they had not, and that it came straight from the river or some indescribably polluted well. It seems that the pilgrims had passed that way, and owing to their pleasing habit of dropping a little of their precious 'holy' water into the wells they meet, some of those wells are absolute hotbeds of infection, so to speak."