himself
at the door of the dim underground _serdab_ where Matthews lounged in
his pajamas till it should be cool enough to go out, to make Matthews
the most ceremonious of bows, and to give that young man a half-amused,
half-annoyed consciousness of being put at his ease. The advantage of
position, Matthews had good reason to feel, was with himself. He knew
more about the bounder than the bounder thought, and it was not he who
had knocked at the bounder's gate. Yet the sound of that knock, pealing
muffled through the hot silence, had been distinctly welcome. Nor could
our incipient connoisseur of rum towns pretend that the sight of Magin
bowing in the doorway was wholly unwelcome, so long had he been stewing
there in the sun by himself. What annoyed him, what amused him, what in
spite of himself impressed him, was to see how the bounder ignored
advantages of position. Matthews had forgotten, too, what an imposing
individual the bounder really was. And measuring his tall figure,
listening to his deep voice, looking at his light eyes and his two
sinister scars and the big shaved dome of a head which he this time
uncovered, our cool enough young man wondered whether there might be
something more than fantastic about this navigator of strange waters. It
was rather odd, at all events, how he kept bobbing up, and what a power
he had of quickening--what? A school-boyish sense of the romantic? Or
mere vulgar curiosity? For he suddenly found himself aware, Guy
Matthews, that what he knew about his visitor was less than what he
desired to know.

The visitor made no haste, however, to volunteer any information. Nor
did he make of Matthews any but the most perfunctory inquiries.

"And Monsieur--What was his name? Your Frenchman?" he continued.

"Gaston. He's not my Frenchman, though," replied Matthews. "He went back
long ago."

"Oh!" uttered Magin. He declined the refreshments which Abbas at that
point produced, even to the cigarette Matthews offered him. He merely
glanced at the make. Then he examined, with a flicker of amusement in
his eyes, the bare white-washed room. A runnel of water trickled across
it in a stone channel that widened in the centre into a shallow pool. "A
bit of a lark, eh? I remember that _mot_ of yours, Mr. Matthews. To sit
steaming, or perhaps I should say dreaming, in a sort of Turkish bath in
the bottom of Elam while over there in Europe--"

"Is there anything new?" asked Matthews, recognizing his cal