But now Max found not much to say. The girl dominated conversation, and it was the kind of conversation Max had no knack for. Here were none of your post-mortems on the day past - vistas! tombs! curious beggars! - no bringing out of small prizes from the shops and bazaars, no speculation on tomorrow's itinerary; only a passing reference to a party tonight at the Austrian Consulate. Here instead was unilateral confession, and Mildred contemplating a rock with trilobite fossiles she'd found out near the site of the Pharos, the other two men listening to Victoria but yet off somewhere else switching glances at each other, at the door, about the room. Dinner came, was eaten, went. But even with a filled belly Max could not cheer up. They were somehow depressing: Max felt disquieted. What had he walked into? It showed bad judgment, settling on this lot. 'My God,' from Goodfellow. They looked up to see, materialized behind them, an emaciated figure in evening dress whose head appeared to be that of a nettled sparrow-hawk. The head guffawed, retaining its fierce expression. Victoria bubbled over in a laugh. 'It's Hugh!' she cried, delighted. 'Indeed,' came a hollow voice from inside somewhere. 'Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury,' said Goodfellow, ungracious. 'Harmakhis.' Bongo-Shaftsbury indicated the ceramic hawk's head. 'God of Heliopolis and chief deity of Lower Egypt. Utterly genuine, this: a mask, you know, used in the ancient rituals.' He seated himself next to Victoria. Goodfellow scowled. 'Literally Horus on the horizon, also represented as a lion with the head of a man. Like the Sphinx.' 'Oh,' Victoria said (that languid 'oh'), 'the Sphinx.' 'How far down the Nile do you intend to go,' asked Porpentine. 'Mr. Goodfellow has mentioned your interest in Luxor.' 'I feel it is fresh territory, sir,' Bongo-Shaftsbury replied. 'No first-rate work around the area since Grebaut discovered the tomb of the Theban priests back in '91. Of course one should have a look round the pyramids at Gaza, but that is pretty much old hat since Mr. Flinders Petrie's painstaking inspection of sixteen or seventeen years ago.' Now what was this, Max wondered. An Egyptologist was he, or only reciting from the pages of his Baedeker? Victoria poised prettily between Goodfellow and Bongo-Shaftsbury, attempting to maintain a kind of flirtatious equilibrium. On the face of it, all normal. Rivalry for the young lady's attentions between the two, Mildred a younger sister, Porpentine perhaps a personal secretary; for Goodfellow did have the affluent look. But beneath? He came to the awareness reluctantly. In Baedeker land one doesn't often run across impostors. Duplicity is against the law, it is being a Bad Fellow. But they were only posing as tourists. Playing a game different from Max's; and it frightened him. Talk at the table stopped. The faces of the three men lost whatever marks of specific passion they had held. The cause was approaching their table: an unremarkable figure wearing a cape and blue eyeglasses. 'Hullo Lepsius,' said Goodfellow. 'Tire of the climate in Brindisi, did you?' 'Sudden business called me to Egypt.' So the party had already grown from four to seven. Max remembered his vision. What quaint manner of peregrine here: these two? He saw a flicker of communication between the newcomers, rapid and nearly coinciding with a similar glance between Porpentine and Goodfellow. Was that how the sides were drawn up? Were there sides at all? Goodfellow sniffed at his wine. 'Your traveling companion,' he said at last. 'We'd rather hoped to see him again.' 'Gone to a Switzerland,' said Lepsius, 'of clean winds, clean mountains. One can have enough, one day, of this soiled South.' 'Unless you go far enough south. I imagine far enough down the Nile one gets back to a kind of primitive spotlessness.' Good timing, Max noted. And the gestures preceded the lines as they should. Whoever they were, it was none of your amateur night. Lepsius speculated: 'Doesn't the law of the wild beast prevail down there? There are no property rights. There is fighting. The victor wins all. Glory, life, power and property; all.' 'Perhaps. But in Europe, you know, we are civilized. Fortunately jungle law is inadmissible.' Odd: neither Porpentine nor Bongo-Shaftsbury spoke. Each had bent a close eye on his own man, keeping expressionless. 'Shall we meet again in Cairo then,' said Lepsius. 'Most certainly'; nodding. Lepsius took his leave then. 'What a queer gentleman,' Victoria smiled, restraining Mildred, who'd cocked an arm preparing to heave her rock at his retreating form.
Bongo-Shaftsbury turned to Porpentine. 'Is it queer to favor the clean over the impure?'
'It may depend on one's employment,' was Porpentine's rejoinder: 'and employer.'
Time had come for the Fink to close up. Bongo-Shaftsbury took the check with an alacrity which amused them
