When he had done registering, a boy came and took his bags and the key to his room. “Much obliged to you, Mr. Hudson.” “Not at all.” “Like to see something of you, if you don’t mind. Wonder if you could give me an idea of the lay of the land.” I said I should be delighted and we made a date to meet for tea in the cool of the late afternoon, on the terrace. When he had gone, I asked the manager about him but he, old friend that he was (he has been manager for twelve years and looks up to me as an elder statesman, in the hotel at least, since I have lived there longer), merely shrugged and said, “It’s too much for me, sir.” And I could get no more out of him. 2 The terrace was nearly cool when we met at six o’clock, at the hour when the Egyptian sun has just lost its unbearable gold, falling, a scarlet disc, into the white stone hills across the dull river which, at this season, winds narrowly among the mud-flats, a third of its usual size, diminished by heat. “Don’t suppose we could order a drink ... not that I’m much of a drinking man, you know. Get quite a thirst, though, on a day like this.” I told him that since foreigners had ceased to come here, the bar had been closed down: Moslems for religious reasons did not use alcohol. “I know, I know,” he said. “Studied all about them, even read the Koran. Frightful stuff, too.” “No worse than most documents revealed by heaven,” I said gently, not wanting to get on to that subject. “But tell me what brings you to these parts?” “I was going to ask _you_ the same thing,” said Butler genially, taking the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river a boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. “The manager tells me you’ve been up here for twenty years.” “You must have found a language in common.” Butler chuckled. “These devils understand you well enough if they want to. But you....” “I was an archaeologist at one time,” I said and I told him the familiar story which I have repeated so many times now that I have almost come to believe it. “I was from Boston originally. Do you know Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing. Too much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago, I decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs.” This was a new, plausible touch, “Egypt was always my single passion and so I came to Luxor, to this hotel where I’ve been quite content, though hardly industrious.” “How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization.” “I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic world of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special dispensation.” “Old hand, then, with the natives?” “But a little out of practice. All my Egyptian friends have seen fit to die and I live now as though I were already dead myself.”