One of my native inspectors came to me in Cairo one day, and reported that strange events were taking place by night at a certain point upon the Suez Canal. Some Bedouin were camped in the desert upon the far side of the Canal, and were said to be in possession of some fine antique bronzes which were believed to have come from Turkey or Syria; and a certain Bulgarian dealer, named Nikola Yamani, was endeavouring to purchase these and to bring them secretly into Egypt for sale. I therefore gave the inspector the necessary instructions, with the result that as soon as Nikola had made his purchase he was asked to bring the objects to the nearest office of the Department of Antiquities, which happened to be at the town of Zagazig, and there to give me the opportunity of buying them from him for the Cairo museum. Now it so happened that one of the Diplomatic Secretaries at the British Agency was anxious to finance some excavations amongst the ruins of the ancient Bubastis, near Zagazig; and when I went down by train a few days later to look at these bronzes, he came with me to look at the site of his proposed excavations. This simple fact caused all the trouble which I am about to relate; for destiny moved in the following manner. The coming of the Diplomatic Secretary, shining in the reflected glory of his chief, Lord Kitchener, was telegraphed to the Egyptian provincial Governor, who lived at Zagazig; the Governor met us and took us in semi-state to lunch with him; Nikola Yamani saw the procession, thought the whole might of the British Empire had come to seize his antiquities, dashed off to the Inspector’s office, bribed the native clerk in charge to hide the one and only fine piece in the collection, and then sat down to await our arrival, satisfied that, even if we seized all the pieces, he would still be in possession of the important bronze statuette which now was hidden under a couch in an adjoining room. Later, when we came to the office, I decided at once that the bronzes which were shown to me were not worth purchasing for the nation; and, when we returned to Cairo, I described them to the head of the Museum, Sir Gaston Maspero, and we officially rejected them. Their owner, therefore, went to the office to claim them; and his rage may be imagined when the rogue of a clerk, whom he had bribed to hide the best piece, looked him in the face and told him that he must have been bewitched, for no bronze had ever been hidden at all. A lie of this kind, which sounds so blatant to our ears, can easily pass muster in Egypt by the introduction of this suggestion that the victim has been bewitched; for it is common knowledge there that persons who have fallen into the power of the _djins_ often believe themselves possessed of imaginary wealth.