The Locked Room

The party assembled at the dusty roadside outside Cairo, joining a long caravan of camels and carriages bound for Suez under the watchful eye of Hassan al-Rashidi, a dour and experienced caravan master flanked by Bedouin guards carrying ornately engraved jezail rifles and curved scimitars. Among their fellow travelers were a fussy Reverend and his wife with trunks full of Bibles, and a blustering East India Company man named Gerald Hewitt, who was already berating his put-upon servant before…