Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 3, March 1979

Death in Egypt by Henry T. Parry

Which one? Beasley asked himself. Which one thinks he is going to knock me off?

He looked at the tour members gathered in the riverboat’s lounge, where they sat talking and drinking like old friends although they had met only the week before. Reaching for the peanuts, he flicked them expertly one by one into his mouth, displaying the blue shield entwined by a snake that was tattooed on his forearm. As he chewed, he smiled in secret amusement at his answer to the nosey types who had tried to find out from him more than he wished to tell them about himself. “I ain’t of no interest to anyone,” he had insisted, with an aw-shucks, rough-diamond honesty, adding to himself, Except the Internal Revenue Service.

A cruise up the Nile River was not his idea of a vacation — Las Vegas or Acapulco would be more like it — but Agnes had exclaimed over the folders that Seven League Tours had sent her. His knowledge of Egypt was limited to vague memories of pictures in which overseers stood sideways on huge blocks of stone and lashed the backs of slaves who toiled at the drag ropes. He wished he had some pictures like that to take home to the union president to illustrate the land of contract he’d like to negotiate next time for Beasley Builders. It seemed to him that Agnes, now that they had money stashed away, was trying to wean him from his construction-site habits, just as she was making him dress more like the president of a company.

She had not been able to get him to stop wearing his diamond ring. “It’s the only thing I got that ain’t been mortgaged sometime or other,” he told her, “and that includes you, Aggie.” He was not unfamiliar with violence — he had battled his way from operating a manual concrete-mixer to the presidency of his own company — and had taken part in and known about practices he hoped were behind him forever. But the idea that someone in this soft, easy-going group intended to kill him was ridiculous. They were pussy cats and he had run with tigers.

Just the same, there were the threats. The first had come two days ago, their first day on the boat. He had come down from the bar to their stateroom to put on the coat that Aggie insisted he wear for dinner, until she found out that he was the only man in the dining room wearing a coat. He found the small red-bordered label pasted to the mirror.

“You will die for the Arena,” it read, in the careful lettering of a draftsman. He had clumsily removed it with a razor blade and was about to throw it away when he changed his mind and placed the crumpled slip among his traveling papers, saying nothing to Aggie. The next threat, at lunch yesterday, was not two feet from his face when he looked up from the menu at the tall, grave-faced waiter who held his tray pressed vertically against his robe, its bottom displaying the same kind of red-margined sticker that read “Remember the Arena.”

He took a slug from his glass, captured a handful of peanuts from the bowl, and mentally went down the list of tour members.

“Our tours are limited to twenty persons to give you the best in travel service,” Seven League Tours had boasted.

Van Alt, the tour director? Not likely. They had met only three days earlier at the Cairo airport. One thing he had noticed about Van Alt, and Van Alt seemed to know it and to resent him for it, was a lack that should not have been overlooked by an agency that claimed to take care of every detail, and charged accordingly. A complaint could get Van Alt fired, and Beasley had pointed this out to him, more as a casual comment than as a threat.

He was aware too of Van Alt’s practice of privately bestowing nicknames on the tour members. His own, of course, was Beastly, and although he regarded it as mild compared with what he had been called over the years, Van Alt’s attitude irritated him. Van Alt had referred to Aggie as the Mink Connection, even though she had not brought any of her furs on the trip. Van Alt was smart, but he wasn’t smart enough to know that a nickname should not be too accurate. Nor was he smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

But there was no way he could know about the Arena.

Beasley dismissed the women on the tour — twelve, including Aggie. Not even Aggie knew about the Arena; he never discussed matters of this kind with her. He dismissed Aggie too, although he admitted there had been a time when Aggie had had reason for being sore at him. But that was long ago and she wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. Anyway, she wouldn’t sneak around and paste up little notes. Pick up the nearest thing and fling it at him — that was Aggie’s way.

What about that little grey creep — DeWin? Trewin? something like that — sitting by himself with a glass of dry sherry and an even drier-looking book before him? Or that guy Hunter who showed up at breakfast their first day, wearing a jungle shirt and shorts and a white sailor hat turned down all around so that it looked like a sun helmet? Beasley had to admit that Hunter’s nickname, Dr. Livingstone, fitted him.

It couldn’t be anyone from the four West Coast couples who kept themselves apart from the others as if they were uneasy about associating with anyone who had ever shoveled snow. And certainly it couldn’t be that skinny professorlike fellow, Rogers, who was hired by the agency to keep them standing in the sun while he lectured them on the Middle Kingdom and the old gods and the achievements of ancient architects — a profession which he, as a builder, held in impatient contempt.

Beasley rose from the table to go down to see how Aggie was doing with the bug she seemed to have picked up. Dinner would not interest her, he was certain, nor would she be going ashore to tonight’s sound-and-light show at the temple. She would sleep like the dead until morning. He helped himself to the remaining peanuts and, tilting the bowl, he uncovered the sticker on its bottom.

It read: “Soon.”

The knocking at the door was insistent but controlled, as though under restraint because of the other passengers. Rogers resisted it, rationalizing that it must be a door other than his or that a crewman was pounding pipes in the overhead. When a vigorous shaking rattled the door, he surrendered and got up to answer it.

Van Alt stood in his pajamas. Behind him was an Egyptian who took pleasure in whatever it was that required people to be aroused at dawn.

“I want you to go with me. Hassan has found a body. He thinks it’s someone from our tour.”

“Yes. Yes. Your tour. Was in my carriage yesterday,” the Egyptian said.

“Who’s missing?” Rogers asked. “Surely someone would have reported someone missing by now.”

“No one’s been reported missing and I can’t very well get them all up at this hour to see if anyone is missing.”

Rogers saw that Van Alt was shaken and, for some reason, frightened. An experienced tour director who faced with equanimity cancelled flights, the usurpation by oil sheiks of rooms reserved months earlier for his tour, and the even more trying complaints of the tour members, Van Alt would not be expected to be so disturbed by the story the carriage driver had brought him. His was not the only tour on the Cheops, so the body might not be his responsibility. On the other hand, he could not afford to assume the driver was wrong.

“I’ll meet you at the gangway,” Rogers said.

He found the two men waiting beside the watchman and followed them ashore, climbing the stairs up the sandy bank into the palm-lined boulevard that skirted the river. The grey light that lay over the quiet river and the empty street was already dissolving under the oblique sunrise. The boulevard smelled of yesterday s carriage horses. The air, Rogers noted, was not cool. Rather there was an absence of heat, as though it had not completely cooled during the night and now was lying at some thermal nadir before beginning the climb to the daily hundred-degree mark. The dawn had a used quality as if, like everything else in this strange land, it was already old.

“Hassan says he was on his way to the stables. He lives somewhere on the other side of the temple area and cuts through there to get to the boulevard. I personally think he goes through the temple area to see what’s been dropped at the sound-and-light show the night before. He was walking through the forecourt of the temple and when he came to the steps he saw feet sticking out from the base of the obelisk—” Van Alt looked at Hassan.

“One look. Dead. I come straightly to you,” Hassan said as if in response to a minor pleasantry.

They turned off the boulevard and entered the long approach to the forecourt of the temple, an avenue flanked by massive statues of rams-headed sphinxes who looked down with a brutish, snouted indifference. At the steps of the forecourt they turned left into an intersecting avenue and were led by Hassan to the foot of the obelisk.

“Like I say. Dead.” Hassan smiled cheerfully and pointed.

The body of a man lay in the recess between the base of the obelisk and a low ruined wall. No signs of violence were visible. Van Alt knelt in the sand and jammed his hand against the neck under the angle of the jaw, feeling for a pulse. After a few moments he fumbled for the wrist, dropped it, and placed his hand against the man’s chest. The open, lightless eyes told him the same message as the absent pulse. He slid his hand under the back of the man’s head, feeling cautiously, and hastily withdrew it, plunging his palm into the sand as though to scour it.

“He’s dead,” he said, squatting back on his heels. “Beastly’s dead.”

Rogers tried to suppress the first thought that came to him: Now he won’t be able to stand in the back of the group and conduct an independent conversation while I’m lecturing. The expression on Van Alt’s face, a growing realization of some liberating relief, made Rogers wonder if others were not also experiencing untimely and unsuitable thoughts.

Rogers found Van Alt sitting on the top deck in the lengthening shadow of the wheelhouse, seemingly unaware that Rogers stood behind him. When Rogers slid a deck chair next to him, Van Alt roused himself from his preoccupation.

“How did it go?”

“Uneventful. Nobody seemed to miss you. We got to the temple at Abydos, where I gave them the full treatment. We stopped at that gift shop you hate so much and at Abdul’s papyrus shop — or I guess it’s his uncle’s, isn’t it? What about Beasley?”

“The autopsy showed a fractured skull. I took Mrs. Beasley to the airport. One of our people in Cairo will put her on the plane for New York and make the other arrangements. But take a look at this.”

Van Alt took out an envelope used for airline tickets, from which he extracted a red-bordered label, a fragment of paper whose curled thinness indicated that it had been peeled from something it had been stuck to. On it, in neat hand-lettering, were the words: “You will die for the Arena.”

“We were waiting at the airport when she found this. It was in the envelope where Beasley had kept their airline tickets.”

There was a familiarity about the label that Rogers tried to place. It was a common-enough sticker. Possibly they used them in the file room at the museum.

“What did Mrs. Beasley say about it?”

“She doesn’t know anything about it. She says Beasley never mentioned it to her.”

“If it was among his travel papers, it could have been there before he left home. It may have nothing to do with his death in spite of what it says. You’ll turn it over to the police, I suppose?”

“Of course. When we get back downriver. I’ll let our people there handle it.”

“All we really know is that he was threatened — maybe back home, maybe on the tour. The Arena sounds like sports, and that might involve gambling. Maybe Beasley had a bookie he didn’t treat with sufficient respect.”

“We may never know. Anyway, it isn’t my problem any longer.”

“How about us?” Rogers asked. “Can our tour leave when the boat does?”

“Of course. I saw Achmed, the hotel manager here. He saw a friend in the city. I spread some of Seven League’s money around and we’re free to continue upriver.”

Rogers marvelled at Van Alt’s ability to guide the tour through the thickets that flourish in the path of foreign travel. He admired his unobtrusive patience, his unfailing memory for names and faces, his store of neutral pleasantries. He felt that Van Alt, in dealing with the tour members, projected a hint of some shared assumption, as though he were saying: “Obviously, you and I are men and women of the world, and you are already quite aware of what I am about to tell you, but if I may—” The tourists always felt flattered. He noted that although Van Alt was attentive to the women on the tour, he carefully avoided any attachments. There were already two previous Mrs. Van Alts and a third about to be. He dressed too youthfully for a man who found it necessary to bleach out the streaks of grey that appeared in his blond hair. Rogers observed too that he had a way of suddenly withdrawing, as if some social barrier had been abruptly lowered. And sometimes he felt sure that Van Alt hated Americans.

It would not have occurred to Rogers that his own task on the tour was equally demanding, with lectures sometimes three times a day, covering four thousand years of art, architecture, religion, and history. When the Seven League Tour Agency had approached his museum in search of a lecturer for their Egyptian tour, the museum director had unhesitatingly suggested Rogers as the leading young man in the field. The recommendation had provided him with a paid vacation in the country that had fascinated him ever since he was sixteen and where for one trying and glorious year when he was in graduate school he had worked on a dig.

“What did you find out,” Van Alt asked, “about last night?”

“Not much. Most of the tour went to the sound-and-light performance behind the temple. Except for Mrs. Beasley — she was sick — and the four couples from the West Coast. They stayed on the boat and played bridge. Imagine paying Seven League’s prices and then spending the time playing bridge.”

“Did anyone see Beastly... Beasley, I mean? Did anyone see him leave the sound-and-light show?”

“Not leave, exactly. Trewin, that gloomy fellow who’s always reading, said he sat next to him at the show. When they were leaving, going through the temple area, he said you caught up with them so he went on ahead.”

“That’s right. Beasley was interested in some construction details of the temple. I pointed out a few things. Then Mrs. Murray asked me something and she and I went on ahead.”

“Well, everybody who was at the show had to come through the forecourt and down the steps. That means they passed within thirty feet of where Hassan found the body. Maybe Beasley walked back to the temple later, to see it by moonlight or something,” Rogers said.

“Maybe, but not likely. He struck me as being a tough customer who wouldn’t be given to looking at temples by moonlight.”

“I did talk to the watchman on the gangplank,” Rogers said. “He told me that everybody came back from the sound-and-light about ten-thirty. Some tourists left the boat again after that, and so did some crew members. The card players were among those who went ashore.”

“When did they get back?” Van Alt asked.

“He said they were gone for thirty or forty minutes, just for a walk along the boulevard. I asked them about it. They said they went to that cafe across from the entrance to the temple area and had a drink. Then there were some people, four or five, who came in around three o’clock. They had been at a nightclub in the Fayd-Al-Farm district. They weren’t members of our tour.”

“So Beasley wasn’t bashed by anyone from our group.”

“It doesn’t seem likely that he was,” Rogers said. “He obviously wasn’t going to be assaulted in full view of the people returning from the sound-and-light. And after everyone else was back on the boat except Beasley, it isn’t likely—”

“I think Beasley got behind the crowd; somebody delayed him around the forecourt and bashed him. Whether the guilty person is found or not, I’ve got to put together a good story for the home office.”

“Well, good luck. By the way, when do we sail?”

“In the morning.”

“In that case I’ll get below and study my notes on the temple at Komombo. With interesting observations on mummified crocodiles.”

“This tour is creating its own candidates for mummification,” Van Alt said.

At the head of the companionway, Rogers turned and called, “Van Alt!”

There was no response from the tour director. He sat unmoving, looking across the river with a faint smile, a smile that reflected more than his usual self-approval.

“Van Alt!” Rogers called again, this time more loudly.

Again there was no answer. At that moment Rogers realized what lay beneath Van Alt’s machismo posture, his efforts to sustain a youthful appearance. He was also aware that added credence had been given to the story he had been told that afternoon concerning the events of the previous night, a story in which Van Alt figured but about which he was now understandably silent.

He went down to the main deck and headed for the gangplank, passing the bar where the tour was preparing for dinner. He climbed the waterfront steps to the boulevard, ignoring the hawking carriage drivers, whose animated faces offered sharp contrast to the despondency of their horses. “Halloa! Halloa! See temple in sunset. Cheap. See temple in moon. Cheap.” He walked under the palms of the boulevard to the temple area and entered the long avenue of the rams-headed sphinxes which ended at the forecourt of the temple. The obelisk stood opposite the forecourt steps and a dozen yards to the left, surrounded on three sides by a low ruined wall, its pointed top pink in the setting sun. He seated himself on a sun-heated fragment of the wall and studied the spot where Beasley’s body had lain.

The sand had been disturbed by many feet, official and unofficial. He tried to recall the scene as he had observed it that morning, with Van Alt testing futilely for vital signs. He remembered Van Alt’s swift gesture, his hand plunging into the sand. Getting down on his knees, he probed the sand, turning it over in furrows, lifting it and letting it sift back between his fingers.

At the end of twenty-five minutes he had dug up and felt through the entire area where Beasley’s body had lain, and found nothing except an empty box that had contained camera film. He sat down, resting his back against the obelisk, hoping that he offended none of the mighty whose cartouches were carved into the yellow stone, and examined the churned-up area. An inch of clear colorless wire projected from a furrow like some worm of the age of technology. Rogers carefully lifted it from the sand to find at the end of it a dime-sized, pencil-thick button. Holding it in the palm of his hand, he thought of the years of scientific progress the tiny object represented, and thought too that, in addition to its other capabilities, it would be enough to convict a man of murder.

When Van Alt had asked him about the trip to Abydos that day, Rogers had forgotten to mention that Mrs. Murray had at last begun to unbend.

“I wish my tours consisted only of women like Mrs. Murray,” Van Alt had once said to him. “Women who don’t get excited when minor setbacks occur, who don’t think all foreigners have designs on their bodies or their property, who don’t spread gossip, and don’t take up early in the tour with people they have to shun for the rest of the tour.”

Van Alt was right, Rogers remembered, in another aspect of his analysis of tourist behavior. There were always some tourists who would rather roam through the sleaziest of souvenir stores and subject themselves to the most brazen robbery in the bazaars than see an impressive temple or the most subtle and elegant hieroglyphics. Rogers had watched the tour split into two groups the day when the bus paused in its journey to Abydos. One group went into the roadside souvenir stand that offered the usual pyramids, finger cymbals, beads, and fly whisks. The other had gone into an adjacent shop where Abdulal-Amraz demonstrated the ancient art of making paper from the papyrus plant and used his product to prepare cartouches to sell to the tourists. These he made to order, working deftly with his brush and drawing ink to write the names of the customers in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Rogers knew from Van Alt, who prided himself on his extensive knowledge of the people he dealt with, that Abdul was a member of the faculty of the university in Cairo, his field being early Egyptian history. The souvenir shop and the papyrus-making establishment were owned by an uncle who fostered this sideline which employed his nephew’s knowledge and also provided him with a much-needed supplement to his academic income. It interested Rogers that so many tourists should be taken with this esoteric communication. True, it was an unusual souvenir, made more unusual in some instances by the words the tourists requested be sketched on their square of papyrus. One of the West Coast people, for example, asked Abdul to draw “California, here I come,” a request that caused Abdul to shake his head in good-natured resignation. But mostly they asked for representations of their own or their children’s names.

When the bus was preparing to resume the trip to Abydos, Mrs. Murray climbed aboard, holding out a wet sheet of papyrus inscribed with a cartouche.

“That’s my name in the cartouche,” she said to Rogers as she seated herself beside him. “Or so he says. The thing I like about it is that no one will ever be able to get it into a computer.”

Rogers examined the papyrus. Abdul had inked an oblong border within which a short horizontal zigzag line was drawn over what looked like the branch of a tree. This was followed by a flattened oval, resembling a mouth.

“I don’t know if it’s my name or not,” she said, “and I don’t think it matters, because when I get it home nobody will be able to prove it’s not.”

“Well, this is an R,” Rogers said, pointing to the picture of the mouth. “Certainly there are enough R’s in Murray to make you think Abdul is close.”

“My first name is Ruth.”

“This zigzag line means ‘water’ and this other figure, the branch, means ‘wood.’ Are you sure your name isn’t R. Waterwood?”

She laughed. It was apparent that she was becoming more relaxed in her relations with him and some of the others on the tour. For the first several days she had maintained a friendly reserve. She spoke when spoken to, responding politely, but did nothing to sustain conversation. In this he thought he detected a resemblance to the silent Trewin — possibly as a result of their common New England background. If he remembered the tour data correctly, they both came from Massachusetts. In any case, now that the group had been together for a week Mrs. Murray’s reserve was diminishing, especially insofar as Trewin was concerned. Twice they had had drinks together and several times Rogers had seen them chatting at the rail while the Cheops pushed upriver.

Mrs. Murray asked him a few questions on the nature of hieroglyphics and then led him into an account of how he had gotten into Egyptology. He found himself talking freely, and not for some time did he realize that she was informing herself about his life without revealing the slightest detail of her own. He determined to break the pattern.

“I suppose your husband was prevented from accompanying you?”

“My husband died fifteen years ago in a fall from a horse. We ran a riding school. We bought this horse we knew very little about and—” She fell silent.

“Do you still run the school?”

“No. I tried operating it for two years by myself but I gave it up and opened a shop specializing in riding clothes and riding equipment. I was just thinking how different my place is from that shop we just left.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this, but I suspect that Abdul’s uncle, who owns the shop, kicks back something to the agency. I don’t know the arrangements. I know that Van Alt hates the whole shopping aspect of these trips, but the agency is convinced the customers want it.”

“Some do,” she agreed. “But not every tour can provide a murder.”

“We do our best.”

“It sounds harsh, I know,” she said, her face turned away toward the desert bordering their route, “but in my opinion, Mr. Beasley’s death was a small loss.”

“I know who killed Beasley,” Hunter said.

He had dropped into the bus seat beside Rogers vacated by Mrs. Murray. His voice was portentous, as if he were awed at finding himself the possessor of such information, and at the same time he appeared eager, as if he were unaccustomed to having his statements regarded seriously and was pleased to be in a situation where his words would receive weight. Rogers observed his khaki shorts and knee-length stockings. A forty-five-year-old boy scout, he thought.

“Who killed him?”

Hunter glanced over his shoulder to check that the seat behind them was empty.

“Last night when we got back to the boat after the sound-and-light performance, I found that I had left my fly whisk behind. I recalled looping it over the back of the chair in front of me, so I went back to the temple and found the row and the chair where I had been sitting, but there was no fly whisk. It’s nothing to make a fuss about, I suppose, but I had come to regard it as a good-luck piece.”

“What bearing does—” Rogers began.

“I’m coming to that. I was about to go down the steps of the forecourt into that cross street or whatever when the lights went out. They were a sketchy arrangement anyway — naked bulbs at irregular intervals — but when I reached the street in front of the forecourt steps I could see, in the moonlight, two people coming behind me through the temple itself. I stepped back into the shadows until I could see who they were. They stopped on the steps. Van Alt and Beasley.

“ ‘I don’t like the way you’re running this tour, Van Alt,’ I heard Beasley say. ‘You’re a lousy tour director.’

“ ‘I am regarded as the best tour director in Egypt,’ Van Alt said.

“ ‘That’s what you say,’ Beasley said. ‘Why do you give Aggie the brush-off when she asks you questions about when to be ready for the bus and things like that? You don’t answer. I invite you for a drink at my table and you pass me by like I’m not there. Maybe the others will put up with stuff like that, but you ain’t going to pull it on Aggie and you ain’t going to pull it on me. A tour that costs this much dough ought to be run by a person who can hear when somebody talks to him.’

“ ‘What are you talking about, you stupid Yank?’ Van Alt says. ‘Of course I can hear.’

“ ‘Yeah? Well, O.K., then,’ Beasley goes on, ‘let me tell you what I’m going to do. When I get home I’m going to complain to the Seven League Tour Agency about you. How do they get away charging such high prices and then give us a director who is hard of hearing? The least they’ll do is make you take a hearing examination. Then let’s see if they renew your contract.’ ”

Hunter paused, and then continued.

“Beasley said a couple of words I won’t repeat and continued down the steps. I think he made the wrong turn because he went toward the obelisk. Van Alt ran after him and they disappeared behind the obelisk. I could hear a scuffle, then Van Alt reappeared, came back toward the steps, and turned into the main avenue. He was almost running.”

“But I don’t see that—” Rogers began.

“Beasley was found at the base of that obelisk, wasn’t he? The place where I heard them struggling? Van Alt must have hit him on the head and killed him.”

“Hit him with what?”

“That’s what I’m leading up to. My fly whisk originally had an ebony handle, covered with leather braiding. Some time ago I had the wood replaced by an iron bar twelve inches long and the leather rebraided over it. That fly whisk was more dangerous than any blackjack.”

“So?”

“When Van Alt came back past my hiding place, he was carrying my fly whisk.”

“I know who killed Beasley,” Van Alt said, making the statement in the same off-hand confident manner with which he related triumphs over hotels and airlines. Rogers did not ask the obvious question, knowing that Van Alt would proceed.

“The first night going upriver, I came up here on deck, partly to avoid the tour — they always stay inside with the air-conditioning — and partly to watch the river. I saw Hunter sitting where you are now. He saw that I had seen him so I couldn’t very well not acknowledge that he was there, and I sat down to chat with him for a few minutes.

“ ‘This is my last trip to Africa,’ he said as if we had been discussing African trips for an hour. I made some noncommittal reply.

“ ‘I can’t afford these trips any more,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost all my money.’ Then he blurted out, ‘I’m going to have to go to work.’

“I was about to offer some tongue-in-cheek condolence — I’ve been working ever since I was seventeen — but he went on. ‘My grandmother left me some money,’ he said. ‘Enough so I could live on the income. But I’ve spent most of it on travel. I’m deeply interested in Africa, especially Egypt and the Sudan. This is the second time I have taken this Nile cruise.’

“Eventually he explained the details of the disastrous transaction. He’d met a man at his broker’s office, a man he had seen around but didn’t know well. This man put him in touch with a newly organized company that was going to construct a gambling casino and hotel somewhere on one of the Caribbean islands. There were three principal stockholders and because they needed additional capital they were willing to take in smaller investors. Hunter’s lawyer advised against the idea but Hunter went ahead anyway. He liquidated the assets his grandmother had left him and put everything into the new company — Insulae Unlimited.”

“I think I can see what’s coming,” Rogers said.

“Right. The casino was about half finished when Insulae ran out of money. They had paid every thing they had to the construction company, which had run into all sorts of unforeseen obstacles in the course of construction — at least that’s what they said. Insulae went into bankruptcy and Hunter got paid off at about five cents on the dollar. The land and the half-built casino were bought by a new company that went ahead and finished the project with the same builders.

“The upshot is that Hunter helped pay for the casino but never got to own any part of it. The three principal stockholders claimed to have suffered just as much as Hunter and the other minor holders, but Hunter’s sure they conspired with the building company to swindle him.”

“But how do you tie this in with Beasley s murder?”

“I have an old friend. We used to be guides for the same company. He’s become some kind of a social director for the hotel that the successor company to Insulae put up. He was planning to leave and wanted to know if I’d be interested in taking over his job. He told me that the construction company involved in the bankruptcy was owned by a man named Beasley.”

“But it isn’t likely that Hunter would know about Beasley.”

“Maybe he didn’t. But I think he did know who was behind the swindle. The other day when we were at one of those bus stops on the field trip, Hunter spilled a whole string of credit cards out of his wallet. I helped him pick them up and among them was a business card. The name caught my eye. Beasley Builders — Sam Beasley, President.”

“So here he is on the same tour with the man who defrauded him. It’s a big coincidence,” Rogers said.

“If it is a coincidence. You have to admit he had a motive.”

“But why would he tell you about losing his money because of Beasley if he intended to kill him? It seems to me he wouldn’t mention a word about any connection with Beasley.”

“He didn’t. He never mentioned Beasley’s name — nor the name of Insulae, for that matter. I made that connection. I doubt that Beasley knew Hunter had lost money on one of his buildings. And there was no way for Hunter to know that I knew Beasley was the builder for Insulae. Or that I knew anything at all about Insulae. And there is one other thing.”

“Well?”

“I described Hunter to the watchman who was on duty at the gangplank that night. With that outfit of his he’s conspicuous. I asked him if he had seen anyone dressed like that return to the boat that night, and, if so, when. He said Hunter came back at the same time as the others, then he went ashore again directly and didn’t return for thirty or forty minutes. What more do you want? He’s got a motive and he’s not accounted for during the period the murder occurred. It’s got to be Hunter who killed Beasley.”

Van Alt, Rogers thought, in addition to proclaiming himself the best tour director in Egypt, was now establishing himself as the best detective.

Or possibly the best liar.

“What are you reading, Mr. Trewin?” Rogers asked as he stopped at the table where Trewin was sitting alone in the bar. “May I sit down?”

“Please do.” Trewin cleared his throat as if reluctantly preparing himself for something. “It’s Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.”

“Appropriate in view of what happened last night,” Rogers said, and thought how appropriate the title was for Trewin as well. His somber suit, dark frayed tie, and black-edged eyeglasses made him a reserved and gloomy figure in contrast to the easy-going, easy-laughing casualness of his countrymen. Once the others became aware of Trewin’s demonstrated desire to be let alone, they no longer paid any attention to him, so that he became like some fixture on the tour, a bus driver or a waiter, who is noticed, if at all, only in a cursory fashion. The exception, of course, was Mrs. Murray, who had been seen having drinks with him and chatting with him on deck.

Trewin passed the book to Rogers who, not knowing what to do with it, idly riffled through the pages. He noted that Trewin, or somebody, had underlined many passages. Trewin had fashioned a bookplate which, like so much about him, had a home-made quality and imparted a purse-mouthed, bookkeeperish accountability that may also have been indicative of its owner: “This book is the property of Thomas Trewin.”

“Could you shed any light on last night’s events?” Rogers asked, passing the book back. The waiter placed a drink before Trewin. Anticipating Trewin s hesitant invitation, he waved the waiter away. Trewin, he noted with interest, was drinking doubles and, judging by the number of glasses on the table, he was now on his fourth. Maybe the reclusive Trewin was not as self-sufficient as it might appear.

“Very little. You are interested, I assume, in my movements. I sat with Beasley at the sound-and-light show. We walked partway out together and then Van Alt overtook us. I left them and walked ahead to the boulevard and had coffee at that little cafe opposite the entrance to the temple complex. A little later, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, I can’t be sure, I saw Van Alt come out of the temple grounds. About five minutes after that, I saw that Dr. Livingstone fellow, the one who always carries that horsetail, come out. I came back to the boat a little after that myself.”

His lips twisted bleakly, as though he enjoyed not being able to provide information, but then Rogers was surprised when he added gratuitously, “I know something about the building business. I knew Beasley by reputation. I’m surprised someone didn’t do away with him long before this.”

A general approximation, Rogers thought, of what Van Alt knew about the man who had poured Hunter’s money into his concrete mixers. Insofar as Trewin himself was concerned, Rogers concluded that the most mysterious thing about him was why he was on the cruise at all.

He had nothing solid to go on, Rogers admitted to himself, but this wasn’t a court. It was a cruise where people were supposed to enjoy themselves and not end up lying before a monument with a shattered head. He had motives and some evidence perhaps, and also some suggestions that might point the way to the truth, but he could prove nothing. He couldn’t even convince himself. Sometimes he was certain it was Van Alt, other times he was sure it was the strangely immature Hunter. And now he was wondering whether the solemn Trewin was involved. While the real assailant could be hundreds of miles down the river, traceless in some teeming bazaar.

He dismissed the thought. Knowing, and not caring too much, that he would lose his job if he accused the wrong person, he was determined to confront Van Alt, Hunter, and Trewin with what he knew. He had asked Van Alt to get them together, which he did without objection — which was not his customary way of treating Rogers’ suggestions.

We’re meeting in a frivolous place for a deadly serious purpose, Rogers thought as he waited for the others at a table in the ship’s lounge. The air-conditioning, the brightly colored awnings, the splashing and laughter from the pool on the other side of the sliding glass doors all made this a place where shipboard friendships were begun, to last until the following Christmas when cards would be exchanged between already barely remembered people.

Van Alt was already present, his face showing strain. He passed an airlines envelope from one hand to the other and finally slapped it down on the table in frustration.

Hunter arrived and seated himself, placing his fly whisk on the table and following it with his white hat, which he deposited with a ceremonial flourish. Trewin came in from the brilliant morning sun, waited until his eyes adjusted to the lounge’s dimness, and took his place, regarding the others soberly and looking as though he would prefer to be left in peace to read the book which he laid before him on the table.

“Mr. Van Alt has asked you to meet with us to see if we can’t sort out the facts relating to the—” Rogers groped lamely for a way to avoid the blunt harshness of the word “—death of Sam Beasley. You were asked to bring certain items that might be of help. Mr. Van Alt has brought evidence which he will reveal at the proper time. And you, Mr. Trewin, have brought what was requested. Mr. Hunter has brought his fly whisk.” (His sixteen ounces of iron pipe, Rogers thought, his lethal, home-handyman blackjack.)

“First of all,” he said, “Mr. Hunter. You had a motive. Beasley’s construction company used up your investment and left you broke. And you had a weapon.” He pointed to the fly whisk, its black horsehair glittering on the table. “A weapon you always carried with you, that you said you left behind at the sound-and-light performance. I see it has been returned.”

“I found it hanging from the doorknob of my stateroom door. And I know who put it there.” Hunter gestured toward Van Alt. “He did.”

“That’s right, I did,” Van Alt said. “I found it hanging on the back of a chair at the sound-and-light show. You left it behind and I returned it, that’s all.”

“Not quite all,” Rogers said. “Hunter, will you repeat what you told me?”

Hunter related the argument he had overheard on the steps of the forecourt — how he had seen Van Alt follow Beasley toward the obelisk where the body had been found, how he heard the sounds of conflict. “To me it’s open and shut,” Hunter concluded. “Van Alt hit him with my fly whisk.”

“Did you see it? Did you see me hit him?” Van Alt’s face was white with anger.

“No,” Hunter replied. “I didn’t actually see you. But it’s obvious. He was going to cause you to lose your job. You did follow him to the spot where the crime was committed, and you did have a weapon in your hand.”

“Van Alt, you do admit, don’t you,” Rogers asked, “that there was a struggle? Be careful how you answer. Look at this.” Rogers set on the table a small beige-colored button to which a short length of colorless plastic-covered wire was attached.

“This is your hearing aid, Van Alt. You don’t wear it in the daytime when it can be readily seen. I submit that you and Beasley had a struggle and that this got torn loose. When you examined his body that morning, you found something under Beasley’s head, something you pushed down into the sand.”

Van Alt did not look at the tiny device, as though refusing to acknowledge its existence.

“O.K. I punched — or I tried to punch — Beasley. He was going to cost me my job. Who wants a tour director who can’t hear, even if he is the best tour director in Egypt? But Beasley was a lot more experienced in physical encounters than I am.”

“Then you were wearing—”

“My hearing aid. Yes. It was pulled loose. I did feel it under his head. I did try to cover it with sand.” Van Alt leaped to his feet and swore, bending across the table and shouting into Rogers’ face. “You don’t laugh at people who have lost their sight, do you? Then is there something amusing about people who can’t hear?”

He regained control of himself and sank back into his chair. “I admit that Beasley and I had a brief tussle. But I never hit him with that.” He glanced at Hunter’s fly whisk. “Nor with anything else. And nobody can prove I did.”

“That’s right,” Rogers said. “Nobody can prove you did. May I have that envelope I asked you to bring?”

Van Alt passed him the airlines envelope from which Rogers withdrew the red-edged label bearing the warning: “You will die for the Arena.” Using a paper napkin to avoid smudging the lettering, he smoothed the fragile bit of paper on the table.

“Now may I have your book, Mr. Trewin?”

With a shrug, Trewin passed The Anatomy of Melancholy across the table to him. Rogers opened the front cover of the book and laid it beside the warning message.

Pasted inside the front cover was Trewin’s bookplate, a red-edged label identical with that which Beasley had scraped from his mirror, and bearing in similar, precise, draftsmanlike lettering the words: “This book is the property of Thomas Trewin.”

The three looked at Trewin, expecting him to dismiss the similarity between the warning label and his homemade bookplate by pointing out that red-edged labels were used by the millions, that draftsmen’s lettering was so uniform as to be untraceable to an individual. But Trewin only gave a slight twist to his thin lips, and his dour self-effacing gloom changed to a brooding menace.

“Do you want to explain this to us, Mr. Trewin?” Rogers asked.

“So you’re the one,” Van Alt said. “You killed him.”

“Beasley was going to die,” Trewin said grimly. “I wanted him to know it.”

“I’m a product of the Depression,” Trewin began. “After high school I couldn’t go on to study to be an architect as I’d always hoped. I got a job, after eighteen months of looking — a job driving a tank truck delivering acid to chemical plants. Then the war came and I was in the Army engineers. Specifications, design, and so forth. Anyway, I liked it because I was building something. When I got out, I sold building materials. I was a terrible salesman but there was such a demand I became good enough to open my own business and hire salesmen. It was a successful operation but I didn’t really like it. It was as close, however, as I was ever going to get to being an architect, to building.

“My sister’s husband died suddenly, leaving her with a ten-year-old daughter, Eve. I had designed and built myself a house, where I lived alone, so I asked my sister and Eve to come and live with me. Eve was like a daughter to me — I loved her dearly.”

Trewin stopped and stared out of the dimness of the lounge at the glaring sand on the other side of the river.

“We all got along well together and the time drifted by. In no time, it seemed, Eve had become a lovely young woman, ready to go off to the university. She was an excellent student. When she was completing her sophomore year she told us that she had decided to go to the architectural school. I was extremely pleased and did everything I could, encouraging her, helping with expenses. I never once mentioned how tough I thought it would be for a woman architect in what is still, in my opinion, a hide-bound profession.

“When Eve came home for Christmas during her last year in architectural school, she announced that she had been offered a job with Rock, Gibbings, and Elston, one of the big architectural firms in the city. We were overjoyed and it appeared that my ambitions were being realized through Eve. I think that Christmas was the happiest of our lives. I know it was our last happy one.

“It had snowed all day, then thawed, and after that we had a quick freeze. On top of it there came a long, heavy rain. Eve had been seeing a young man who was home on vacation from college and that night they went to a basketball game in the city. During the game, the roof of the sports arena collapsed and seven people were killed. Eve was one of them.

“I can t describe how shattered our lives were, the sudden pointlessness of everything. I had not realized how much of my old ambition had been transferred to Eve.

“My sister and I went through the motions of daily living, but the light had gone out of our lives. Then, about a year later, my sister received a letter. Here, let me show you.”

Trewin took out a much-handled piece of paper, held together at the folds with tape, and handed it to Rogers.

Rogers set the letter on the table and whispered to Van Alt, who looked at him doubtfully, shrugged, and left the lounge.

“Neither of us had heard of this man,” Trewin said, “but we decided I should visit him and see what he wanted...”

He had expected, Trewin explained, to find a man on his deathbed. Instead, Brennan was sitting at the window of the dim hospital room in the early winter twilight, his eyes sunken and troubled and his lips purple, waiting.

“There is something I must explain to Mrs. Strong,” Brennan said when Trewin explained who he was. “I’m trying to explain it to all of them. I don’t have much time left. And there are others on the list. That list. That dreadful list.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Trewin said. “What list?”

“It was in the papers. I can see it every time I close my eyes. ‘Albert Casseres, 19; Donald McFall, 28—’ ”

“Those are the names of the others who died when the arena roof collapsed,” Trewin broke in.

“ ‘—J. Oliver, 26; Arlene Romero, 21—’ ”

Brennan’s voice had dropped to a monotone. His eyes closed.

“ ‘—Brian Smith, 16; Robert Smith, 14; Eve Strong, 23.’ ”

Brennan opened his eyes, looked briefly and hopelessly at Trewin, and shifted his gaze back to the window as though unable to face his visitor with what he was about to say.

“I killed them. I killed them all.” His voice shook and he covered his face with brown-spotted hands.

Trewin waited, sensing that whatever this man’s connection with Eve’s death had been, there was no doubt that he believed his guilt to be real. Trewin sensed too, within himself, the spark of an idea, a hope that maybe after the months of anguish and loss over Eve’s death, there was something — he didn’t yet know what — he could do about it.

“I was a building inspector for the city,” Brennan said. “My job was to check on the safety of new construction. The Sports Arena was one of my assignments. I want to explain that I wasn’t some incompetent hack filling a job the clubhouse had found for him. I’m a trained engineer and when I took the city job I’d had years of experience in designing steel-frame buildings.

The arena had been designed by a reliable engineering firm I had worked for in my early days. The roof design involved space-frame trusses, a kind of latticework arrangement of steel that would distribute weight in all directions.”

“I know something about them,” Trewin said.

“When the roof was finished, I knew it wasn’t right. I went up there after a heavy rain and I found ponding. If construction isn’t carefully done, you get depressed areas in the roof and in a heavy rain the water doesn’t drain as it should — it just lies there like a pond and adds a burden of weight to the roof. It was out of the question that I should pass on the building until this condition was corrected. I discussed it at the office and somehow word got out that the arena wasn’t going to be approved.

“One day I arrived home to find a car parked in my driveway, a big expensive car. A man got out and walked back to meet me.

“ ‘I’m Sam Beasley,’ he said. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

“He came around to the other side of my car and sat beside me in the front seat. I won’t go into everything he said, but the gist of it was that the arena roof had cost nine hundred and eighty thousand dollars to construct, and would cost another hundred and fifty thousand to correct. He laid an envelope on the seat between us and said it had fourteen thousand dollars in it. It was mine if I approved the building as it was.”

He stopped, took a pill box from his pocket, shook out two tablets, and washed them down, the water glass shaking in his hand.

“I can’t justify what I did. I took the money. I took it because that was what I had always done since I started to work for the city. I had to turn some of it over, but nevertheless I took it. I could have insisted that the roof be fixed and nobody would have opposed me, not publicly anyway. But I took the money. And seven young people died. Two thousand dollars each.

“That roof was designed for thirty pounds per square foot of live load. You remember that we had that heavy snow, a brief thaw, then a freeze followed by unusually heavy rain. So we had the snow load plus the weight of the ponded water, creating an unusual stress. The structural members might have held under either stress separately, but they couldn’t hold under both and the roof collapsed.”

“What is it you want from us?” Trewin asked.

“If the girl’s mother could come to see me, if I could try to convince her I didn’t mean harm to her daughter. I just went along with the system. I can’t die with this terrible guilt.”

Trewin thought for several minutes before he said, “No, she won’t be coming here. I’ll tell her what you told me, but she won’t be coming here.”

“Please, if you knew what it’s like, sitting here facing—”

“Mr. Brennan, there were seven young people killed in the collapse of that roof. Have the families of any of the others answered your letter?”

“No, none. People don’t understand the necessity for forgiveness.”

Brennan turned away and stared out into the dark which now waited on the other side of the window. Trewin stood and made his way through the hospital corridors toward the elevators, taking with him a new idea of death.

“I hired a detective agency to learn about Beasley’s movements,” Trewin told Rogers. “They tracked down somebody on Beasley’s secretarial staff. That’s how I found out about this trip the Beasleys were planning — and, as you see, I managed to get on the same tour.”

Van Alt pushed open the sliding door from the deck and followed Mrs. Murray into the lounge. Her reaction on seeing the group was pleasantly curious, as if instead of meeting the garden-club ladies she expected, their husbands had appeared. She sat down and placed before her the square of papyrus bearing the hieroglyphics Abdul had drawn.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. “This looks like a summit conference. Although I brought this papyrus, as requested, I refuse to serve as recording secretary.”

“Mr. Trewin here has been telling us about his actions on the night of the murder,” Rogers began, “and we thought—”

“Has he indeed?”

“We thought you might be able to help us. But let’s have Mr. Trewin finish his story.”

“I was determined,” Trewin went on, “that Beasley should know he was going to die — and why. There would be no justice in Beasley going out and not knowing why. I also felt some justice in threatening him with those labels during the tour, especially when he was supposed to be enjoying himself.

“I had worked out a number of careful plans for killing him. But it was almost impossible to get him alone. I thought an opportunity might occur on our way to the sound-and-light show. I fell in beside him and said that since we were both involved in building we had a lot in common. This interested him and he indicated that I might not be the nonentity he had thought. We sat together during the performance and started to walk back together after it was over. I deliberately hung back so that the crowd would move on ahead of us. We were the last to leave the sound-and-light area and stopped on the forecourt steps to discuss the span lengths the Egyptians were able to get from limestone when we met Van Alt.”

Van Alt made a swift movement of his eyebrows, as if to say, “Now listen to this.”

“He said he could show us one of the longest still in place — twenty feet, he estimated, from column top to column top. I often wondered what those people could have built if they had had steel. And crooked building inspectors.

“As long as Van Alt was there, I wasn’t going to be able to do anything about Beasley, so I excused myself and went on ahead toward the boulevard. I left just in time because as I came out of the boulevard the lights in the temple area went out. I crossed the boulevard and sat in that cafe where the carriages are and ordered coffee. In about ten or fifteen minutes I saw Van Alt come out of the temple area and head down the boulevard toward the boat landing. He was carrying that.” He pointed to Hunter’s fly whisk. “It occurred to me that this was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I was about to cross the boulevard and reenter the temple area when I saw you” — he looked at Hunter — “come out of the area. A tourist carriage turned into the avenue of the sphinxes. I waited until it had turned the comer at the forecourt steps and gone out of sight. I was sure the place was now deserted, that nobody but Beasley remained behind, and I went in to find — and to kill — Beasley.

“In the moonlight everything was either brightly lit or in deep shadow. As I walked along the avenue with all those statues looking down at me, I thought of the thousands of moonlit nights that had passed over this place since it had been built. I wondered if others before me had entered the sacred premises with murder in their hearts.

“If you think, after all I’ve said, that I killed Beasley, you’re wrong. When I reached the steps of the forecourt, I saw him. He was lying at the foot of the obelisk, between it and the remains of a wall. Somebody had already done what I came to do.”

“Ask Hassan to come in,” said Rogers.

Hassan entered, wearing a long white robe and the red Nubian cap, tall, slender, and serious. He saluted the group gravely, according Mrs. Murray an extra flicker of respect. He placed on the table a heavy package wrapped scantily in newspaper, and stood back, looking expectantly at Rogers. Rogers in turn looked at Van Alt, who, with a wave of his hand, indicated that he should proceed.

“Hassan came to us this morning with this story. And although he understands the language well enough, he would rather I tell you what he told us.

“This morning he was cleaning out his carriage when he noticed something about that” — he pointed at the package — “which made him realize he knew more about Beasley s murder than he thought. He hurried to the boat to catch us before we sailed. On the night of the murder Hassan was waiting outside the temple area in front of the cafe to see if he couldn’t pick up some of the people returning from the sound-and-light show and drive them through the temple area and along the boulevard for a view of the river. About half an hour after the sound-and-light was over, a fare got into his carriage and asked to be driven through the temple grounds. Before they moved off, the passenger asked Hassan to go into the cafe and get cigarettes, and to have a drink of some kind for himself.”

Hassan nodded solemnly.

“When he came back, his carriage was gone. One of the other drivers said he had seen it turning into the temple grounds. Hassan was concerned because these carriages are owned by a concessionaire and if any damage was done, he would lose his job. But he waited, and in about fifteen minutes his horse and carriage drove up in front of the café with no harm done, and Hassan was given a big tip — the equivalent of a full week’s earnings.”

Hassan shrugged, as though dismissing hyperbole.

“This package Hassan brought with him today contains a concrete building block, the kind that has two apertures running through it from top to bottom. It weighs, I should judge, between fifteen and twenty pounds. A five- or six-foot length of rope is tied to the block and the other end is snapped to the horse’s bridle. The block is placed on the ground near the horse’s forelegs and its weight discourages him from moving very far. The drivers carry them in their carriages and use them when they can’t hitch to a tree. In the old days, the hitching block used to be a solid, conical piece of iron, made especially for the purpose. But what attracted Hassan’s attention was this.”

Rogers carefully unwrapped the newspaper and set the block up on end. One end was smeared with blackened stains.

“Tell them, Hassan.”

With patriarchal dignity, his flowing sleeve dropping away from his thin arm, Hassan pointed at Mrs. Murray.

“This lady. She take my carriage.”

Trewin looked at her with puzzled amazement, Hunter with startled awe.

“What nonsense! Yes, I took the carriage. But I didn’t kill anyone,” Mrs. Murray said.

“But what could be a weapon, one with bloodstains on it, was found in the carriage you made off with,” Rogers pointed out.

“The explanation is simple,” she said. “Except that.” She pointed to the concrete block. “I can’t explain that. What happened was that when we returned from the sound-and-light, I didn’t feel ready to get back on board. It was a lovely night, with a full moon. I wanted to go back into the temple area where I could see it alone. I walked back to that cafe where the carriages wait and arranged with one of the drivers — it had occurred to me that the driver himself could become a nuisance, so I gave him some money to go into the cafe and get himself cigarettes and a drink. As soon as he was gone, I climbed up on the driver’s seat, picked up the reins, and drove into the temple grounds. But I didn’t kill anyone. What reason would I have to kill a man I’d never seen until a few days before in Cairo?”

“May I have that letter?” Rogers asked Trewin. “The one your sister received from the building inspector. And your papyrus, Mrs. Murray.”

He placed the letter on the table before him and held the square of papyrus up for all to see, feeling, as he did so, his lecture manner returning.

“This papyrus with the cartouche sketched on it was bought by Mrs. Murray at Abdul s shop the day we went to the temple at Abydos. The first character, this horizontal zigzag line, is the symbol for water. The next character, the one here under the first one which looks like a tree branch, is the symbol for wood. The last character, here on the right, looks like a mouth and has the phonetic value of R. These are phonograms, in this case representing consonants in the ancient language of Egypt. The zigzag line stands for N and the tree branch stands for HT. These hieroglyphics may be translated as N, H, T, R.”

Van Alt stirred in his chair. “This is no time to be giving a lecture on the meaning of hieroglyphics,” he muttered.

The others said nothing. Mrs. Murray was quietly attentive, Trewin somber and tense. Hunter reached to pick up his fly whisk, changed his mind, and hastily withdrew his hand.

“Mrs. Murray, you said that you asked Abdul to write your name in hieroglyphics.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Hieroglyphics are generally read from right to left,” Rogers explained. “So the cartouche on your papyrus would show ‘R’ for your first initial. I think you said your first name is Ruth.”

Mrs. Murray nodded.

“The consonants N, H, and T formed the word which meant ‘strong’ in ancient Egyptian. The name you gave to Abdul, from habit, without thinking, was your full name, Ruth Strong — the same Mrs. Strong to whom this letter was addressed. The mother of Eve Strong, who died when Beasley’s roof collapsed.”

He held up Trewin’s worn letter which opened downward on a hinge of tape.

“You and Trewin are sister and brother. The two of you came on this trip to kill Beasley. Trewin has already admitted his intention. I submit that one of you succeeded — you, Mrs. Murray.”

The lounge was silent. Outside, the deckhands were casting off the mooring lines. The ship trembled faintly. The loudspeaker warned.

“I succeeded,” Mrs. Murray said tersely. “I got tired of waiting for Tom. He was too cautious. Luck is better than careful planning. And I was lucky.

“I had just driven the carriage around the corner into the cross street in front of the forecourt steps. I saw Beasley sitting there alone. I stopped the carriage and asked him if he would like to ride with me through the temple area. At first he seemed hesitant, and then shrugged his shoulders as if surprised that someone was offering to share something with him on an open, friendly basis. As Beasley bent his head looking for the step to climb up beside me, I hit him.”

“With what?”

“With what was at hand. That.” She pointed at the building block. “It was on the floor under the driver’s seat. He fell, but he wasn’t dead. I dragged him into that alcovelike place between the obelisk and the wall. I climbed up on the wall and dropped the block on his head from there — about nine feet, I think. Whatever it was, it was enough. There was no question this time. I put the hitching block back into the carriage, continued along the cross street until I was free of the temple area, turned left, and made it back to the boulevard. Hassan was waiting there, very excited, but I tried to convince him the horse had gotten out of control.”

“How did you get back on the boat? The watchman didn’t mention your coming back.”

“The bridge players were just coming back from a walk on the boulevard. I just followed them up the gangplank. The watchman would assume we were all together. Eight people left for a walk. Nine came back.”

“Now what do we do?” Van Alt asked. “We’ve got a confessed murderer on the tour, and her accomplice.”

The Cheops moved upriver, the palm-fringed boulevard, Hassan, and the waiting carriages six hours behind. The river banks were thin strips of green behind which the immense and pitiless desert waited. The tour had halted briefly in mid-morning to inspect a lonely ruin, with the Cheops uneasily nosed against the sandy bank below the tawny temple columns that waited for the desert to cover them once more.

“ ‘It’s the duty of the tour director to see that all tour members who depart on side trips return from them,’ ” Rogers said. “If that isn’t a quote from the Tour Director’s Guide, it ought to be. When we stopped two hours ago at the temple ruins, did everybody get back on the boat?”

“I didn’t check. They’d better have. There’s nothing here but river and desert.”

“Mrs. Murray — Ruth Strong — and Thomas Trewin didn’t,” Rogers said.

“What do you mean?” said Van Alt in alarm. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve got to get to the ship’s radio!”

“Wait. When we visited the temple ruins at the last stop, I was the last to leave and come down to the boat. The place seemed empty and I was about to start down the bank when I saw Mrs. Murray and Trewin walking away from the temple and the river. They were heading east, into the desert. I called to them and started after them. They indicated I should go back to the boat and kept walking.”

“Heading into the desert!” Van Alt exclaimed. “But they won’t last—”

“Probably not. But survival wasn’t their intention. What was their alternative? You would have turned them in when we got back downriver. The law is the law whether it’s one’s own country or another’s. They were sentencing themselves.”

Van Alt thought for a long time. His face cleared and he nodded.

“This tour,” he said. “A man murdered. The two people involved in it turn up missing. Yet everything is in order, nothing more needs to be done, and—” his voice rose as if in a bright and happy conclusion suddenly arrived at “—none of it can be blamed on me. I am still the best tour director in Egypt.”

Rogers was silent. We must not break another man’s ego bowl, he thought.