mouth of yours. I sometimes fear that in you the banker is
inclined to exchange confidences with the chemist--or even with the son
of Papa who cashes a check. Eh?"

Ganz cleared his throat.

"In that case," he rejoined, "all you have to do is to ask him, when you
meet him again at Bala Bala. And the English bank will no doubt be happy
to accept the transfer of your account."

Magin began to chuckle.

"We assert our dignity? Never mind, Adolf. As a matter of fact I have a
high opinion of your discretion--so high that when I found the Imperial
Bank of Elam I shall put you in charge of it! And you did me a real
service by sending that motor-boat across my bow this morning. For in it
I discovered just the chauffeur I have been looking for. I am getting
tired of my galley, you know. You will see something when I come back."

"But," Ganz asked after a moment, "do you really expect to come back?"

"But what else should I do? End my days sneezing and sniffling by some
polite lake of Zurich like you, my poor Ganz, when you find in your hand
the magic key that might unlock for you any door in the world? That, for
example, is not my idea of a lark, as your son of Papa would say! Men
are astounding animals, I admit. But I never could live in Europe, where
you can't turn around without stepping on some one else's toes. I want
room! I want air! I want light! And for a collector, you know, America
is after all a little bare. While here--!"

"O God!" cried Adolf Ganz out of his dark Persian portico.

III

As Gaston very truly observed, there are moments in Persia when even the
most experienced chauffeur is capable of an emotion. And an unusual
number of such moments enlivened for Gaston and his companions their
journey up the Ab-i-Diz. Indeed Matthews asked himself more than once
why he had chosen so doubtful a road to Dizful, when he might so much
more easily have ridden there, and at night. It certainly was not
beautiful, that river of brass zigzagging out of sight of its empty
hinterland. Very seldom did anything so visible as a palm lift itself
against the blinding Persian blue. Konar trees were commoner, their
dense round masses sometimes shading a white-washed tomb or a black
tent. Once or twice at sight of the motor-boat a _bellam_, a native
canoe, took refuge at the mouth of one of the gullies that scarred the
bank like sun-cracks. Generally, however, there was nothing to be seen
between the water and the sky but t