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ssight always induces. The wind blew his dark locks away from his intellectual brow (for he had declined, as usual, to wear a hat) and molded tlhe linen of his shirt to his broad breast (for he had refused to put on his coat until we were ready to disembark). His profile (for he had ttnrned from me, to gaze out across the blue waters) might have servedl as the model for Praxiteles or Michelangelo— the boldly sculpturecd arch of the nose, the firm chin and jaw, the strong yet sensitive cuirve of the lips. The lips parted. (Finally!) He spoke.

"We stopped at Gibraltar and Mallta."

"Yes, Emerson, we did." By biting cdown on my lip I managed to say no more.

"We found letters and newspaper from home awaiting us at both places."

"I know that, Emerson. They came overland by train, more quickly than we ..." A premonition of
my own made my voice falter. "Pray continue."

Emerson turned slowly, resting one arm on the rail. "Did you read the newspapers, Peabody?"

"Some of them."

"The Daily Yell? "

I do not lie unless it is absolutely necessary. "Was the Yell among the newspapers, Emerson?"

"It is an interesting question, Peabody." Emerson's voice had dropped to the growling purr that presages an explosion. "I thought you might know the answer, for I did not until this morning, when I happened to observe one of the other passengers reading that contemptible rag. When I inquired where he had got it—for the date was that of the seventeenth, three days after we left London—he informed me that several copies had been taken aboard at Malta."

"Indeed?"

"You missed one, Peabody. What did you do with the rest, toss them overboard?"

The corners of his lips quivered, not with fury but with amusement. I was somewhat disappointed— for Emerson's outbursts of rage are always inspiring— but I could not help responding in kind.

"Certainly not. That would have constituted a wanton destruction of the property of others. They are under our mattress."

"Ah. I might have noticed the crackle of paper had I not been distracted by other things."

"I did my best to distract you."

Emerson burst out laughing. "You succeeded, my dear. You always do. I don't know why you were so determined to prevent me from seeing the story, I cannot accuse you this time of babbling to that fiend
of a journalist. He only returned to England ten days before we left, and as soon as I learned of his imminent arrival I made certain you had no opportunity to see him."

"Oh, you did, did you?"

"Kevin O'Connell"— Emerson's tone, as he pronounced the name, turned it into an expletive— "Kevin O'Connell is an unscrupulous wretch, for whom you have an unaccountable affection. He worms information out of you, Amelia. You know he does. How often in the past has he caused us trouble?"

As often as he has come nobly to our assistance," I replied. "He would never do anything deliberately
to harm us, Emerson."

"Well ... I admit the story was not as damaging as I might have expected."

It would have been a good deal more damaging if I had not warned Kevin off. Emerson does not believe in telephones. He refuses to have them installed at Amarna House. However, we were in London for two days before we left, and I managed to put through a trunk call from the hotel. I too had seen the notice
of Kevin's impending return, and my premonitions are as well-founded as Emerson's.

"I suppose he picked up his information while he was in the Sudan," Emerson mused. "He was the only one to use it, there was nothing in the Times or the Mirror. "

"Their correspondents were concerned only with the military situation, I suppose. Kevin, however— "

"Takes a proprietary interest in our affairs," Emerson finished. "Curse it! I suppose it was unreasonable
to hope O'Connell would not question the officers at Sanam Abu Dom about us, but one would have thought military persons would not spread gossip and idle rumors."

"They knew we had gone out into the desert after Reggie Forthright, whose