The Quest of Julian Day Read Online Free Page A

travels.
    We talked till lunch-time, and a most interesting old gentleman Sir Walter proved to be; to me, at least, as I have always been fascinated by the history of ancient civilisations. He told me a lot about the various ‘digs’ he had superintended during his many winters in Egypt and the only thing which struck me as a little strange about him was his unnatural reticence in speaking of his plans for the coming winter.
    For some years past, apparently, his daughter had been very closely associated with him in his work, and for a reason which he did not specify she had elected to remain in Egypt all through the summer. He was meeting her there and they would proceed to Luxor. But after that his plans, for a professional archæologist, were curiously vague.
    At first I thought he was travelling on his own, but at lunch I saw him sitting with a youngish couple and afterwards, when he came on deck again, he introduced them to me as Mr. and Mrs. Belville. They were a delightful pair and very soon, in that astonishingly quick way in which shipboard acquaintances develop, I was on most friendly terms with them.
    Their association with Sir Walter rather puzzled me at first, as although Harry Belville was a charming fellow—kind, generous to a fault and possessing a most attractive ingenuousness—it was quite clear that he hadn’t got a brain in his head. He hardly knew Gothic architecture from Greek, let alone which mattered among the thirty-three dynasties of the Pharaohs who ruled Egypt for some five thousand years, and his wife, Clarissa, was little better informed on such subjects.
    Her mind was much the quicker of the two but it revolved mainly round having a good time, clothes, cocktails and the sort of amusing nonsense that one reads in magazines like ‘The New Yorker’. It was she who had the money. Her father had been something to do with manufacturing hats at Luton and had left her with quite a useful fortune so that Harry, who, I learnt later, had barely enough to keep himself in cigarettes, did not have to work. Part of their charm was the obvious way they adored each other and their almost comical uneasinessif they were separated for upwards of an hour; although they had been married for the best part of five years.
    He was not much to look at—a medium-sized, rather fat chap with thinning, fairish hair—whereas she was definitely attractive. Her immense vitality, piquant little face and crop of flaming red curls would have gained her plenty of admirers anywhere. I think his attraction for her lay in his unfailing good-temper and something rather stolid but extremely sound about him; because, although Harry’s education had stopped short at the level of the Upper Fourth in his public school, he had an extremely good fund of hard common-sense.
    By the time we rounded Gib. I had solved the mystery of what the Belvilles were doing in the company of such an erudite old man as Sir Walter. For some time past the Egyptian Government has exercised absolute control over all ‘digs’. No one is allowed to excavate without a permit any more. The Government supply a portion of the funds and the labour, while making use of the European experts who come out; but any antiquities discovered in these ‘digs’ remain the sole property of the Government.
    Sir Walter had tumbled on a new site the previous winter that he wished to investigate without the Government’s knowledge or assistance. But like so many men who devote their lives to science, he had very little money of his own and, somehow or other, he had had to raise private funds for the necessary labour. He had been about the matter cautiously during the past summer in England and had apparently been unsuccessful until he had thought of approaching his daughter’s old school-friend Clarissa. After consulting her beloved Harry she had agreed to put up the necessary cash and as they had never been to Egypt they