Burke rose, prepared to take his leave, but the Tracer was apparently busy with the combination lock of a safe, and the young man lingered a moment to make his adieus.
As he stood waiting for the Tracer to turn around he studied the writing on the sheet of paper which he held toward the light: Joram Smiles, no profession, 613 West 24th Street.

Emanuel Gandon, no profession, same address.

Very dangerous men.
It occurred to him that these three lines of pencil-writing had cost him a thousand dollars--and at the same instant he flushed with shame at the idea of measuring the money value of anything in such a quest as this.
And yet--and yet he had already spent a great deal of money in his brief quest, and--_was_ he any nearer the goal--even with the penciled addresses of these two men in his possession?
Even with these men almost within pistol shot! Pondering there, immersed in frowning retrospection, the room, the Tracer, the city seemed to fade from his view.

He saw the red sand blowing in the desert; he heard the sickly squealing of camels at the El Teb Wells; he saw the sun strike fire from the rippling waters of Sais; he saw the plain, and the ruins high above it; and the odor of the Long Bazaar smote him like a blow, and he heard the far call to prayer from the minarets of Sa-el-Hagar, once Sais, the mysterious--Sais of the million lanterns, Sais of that splendid festival where the Great Triad's worship swayed dynasty after dynasty, and where, through the hot centuries, Isis, veiled, impassive, looked out upon the hundredth king of kings, Meris, the Builder of Gardens, dragged dead at the chariot of Upper and Lower Egypt.
Slowly the visions faded; into his remote eyes crept the consciousness of the twentieth century again; he heard the river whistles blowing, and the far dissonance of the streets--that iron undertone vibrating through the metropolis of the West from river to river and from the Palisades to the sea.
His gaze wandered about the room, from telephone desk to bookcase, from the table to the huge steel safe, door ajar, swung outward like the polished breech of a twelve-inch gun.
Then his vacant eyes met the eyes of the Tracer of Lost Persons, almost helplessly.

And for the first time the full significance of this quest he had undertaken came over him like despair--this strange, hopeless, fantastic quest, blindly, savagely pursued from the sand wastes of Sais to the wastes of this vast arid city of iron and masonry, ringing to the sky with the menacing clamor of its five monstrous boroughs.
Curiously weary of a sudden, he sat down, resting his head on one hand.
The Tracer watched him, bent partly over his desk.