Jimgrim by Talbot Mundy

Dared by Grim and nagged by Chullunder Ghose; perhaps, too, with my argument at the back of her mind, Baltis had reacted perfectly. Grim's gamble -- a throw of life's dice in the dark -- was too bold and too suddenly done not to delight her.

When, on the spur of that moment, she acknowledged herself as her dead twin sister, and acknowledged Grim as Dorje, she did it recklessly, thrilled by the danger and almost drunk with the daring of the idea. The drama of it had us all by the throat. Grim -- turbaned, laconic, inscrutable -- suddenly seen in the glare of an electric lantern standing at the top of that agelessly ancient ramp in the heart of Gizeh, would have astonished almost anyone into at least momentary obedience. Grim had gambled on the possibility that Dorje's men had never seen their master; although, when he explained it afterwards, that part of his strategy turned out to have been closely reasoned and at least in line with probability. Baltis almost exactly resembled her sister and Dorie's men had no conceivable reason for supposing she was not the woman who, to their probably certain knowledge, did know Dorje intimately. Grim had gambled on her convincing them. She might have wrecked Grim's chances by denying him before those men, but the really deadly risk Grim took was that he made her the key to the future. If he was going to pretend to be Dorje, Baltis would be in a position to betray him whenever she pleased. She fully realized it. And she showed it instantly by trying to humiliate and score off us.