Breakfasting, a little one-handedly, that Monday morning, Billy was approached by his companion of the night. The young Englishman looked fresh and fit and subtly triumphant.
"Good news—what?" he said with a genial smile.
"If authentic," said the dogged Billy.
"Of all the fanatic f——!" The sandy-haired young man checked his explosiveness in mid-air. He gave a glance at the bulge of bandage beneath Billy\'s coat sleeve and dropped into a chair beside him. "How\'s the arm?" he inquired in a tone of restraint.
"Fine," said Billy without enthusiasm.
"Glad of that. Afraid the canal bath wouldn\'t do it any good. Beastly old place, that." Then the Englishman gave a sudden chuckle. "It\'s a regular old lark when you come to think of it!"
"Our lack of luck wasn\'t any great lark." Savagely Bill speared his bacon.
"Luck? Why we—Oh, come now, my dear fellow, you can\'t pretend to maintain those suspicions now! Of course the letter is authentic!" Falconer spoke between irritation and raillery. "That Turkish fellow could hardly fake that letter to them, could he? No, and we will have to acknowledge ourselves actuated by a too-hasty suspicion—inevitable under the circumstance—and be grateful that the uncertainty is over. That\'s the only way to look at it."
"We don\'t know that the Evershams have received a \'letter.\' It might be another fraudulent telegram that was sent them from Alexandria."
"That is a bit too thick. You\'re a Holmes for suspicion!" Falconer laughed. "I believe if Miss Beecher herself walked into this dining room you would question if she were not a deceiving effigy!"
"I might question that anyway." Billy\'s tone was dry. "And I daresay I am a fool. But that dancer\'s story is pretty straight if she didn\'t know the names, and it fits in disasterously well with my limousine story."
"You\'re not the first man to be staggered by a coincidence," Falconer told him. "And that woman\'s yarn was convincing enough, though all the time I was dubious, you remember. But now that the Evershams have heard," and the young Englishman\'s deep note of relief showed how tormenting had been his uncertainty, "why now we have no further right to put Miss Beecher\'s name into the affair. There is evidently some other girl concerned who may or may not be as guileless as she represented to the Baroff girl, and I shall lay that story before the ambassador and leave her rescue to authentic ways."
He laughed a little shamefacedly at the unauthentic ways of last night, and added, looking off across the room, "My sister and Lady Claire are going to Luxor to-night, and I expect to accompany them. If you should have any word about Miss Beecher\'s return here I should be glad if you would let me know."
"If she is safe in Alexandria she\'d never think of writing me," said Billy bluntly. "Our acquaintance is distinctly one-sided."
"I quite understand. She was your countrywoman in a strange land and all that."
"And all that," Billy echoed. "What time is your train?"
"Six-thirty."
"Then if I don\'t see you before that here\'s good luck and good-by."
Billy rose and shook hands and the two young men parted after a few more words.
"You have an idée-fixe—beware of it!" was Falconer\'s caution, serious beneath its air of banter, and on the other hand Billy perceived in the cautioner a latent uneasiness considered so irrational that he was doing his sensible best to disown it.
So Falconer took himself off about the preparations for departure and Billy B. Hill was left to face his problem alone. Black worry plucked at him. He did not know what under the sun he could do next. Already that day he had done what he could. He had been out early and run down the one-eyed factotum loitering about the corner and under cover of a transaction over a scarab he had made a number of plans.
He wanted the Captain followed every instant of the day. There were enough active little Arabs greedy for piastres to do that well and send back constant word to him. There was coming that day, he felt, an interview between him and that Captain. Then he wanted the one-eyed man to insinuate himself into the palace. He must find out things. He could use his connection with the eunuch who was uncle of his brother\'s wife.
So much Billy had already arranged and now after a hasty breakfast he was off to the consul, where he proceeded to unfold his story while the consul drew little circles on his blotter and looked out of the corners of his eyes at this astonishing young man.
He made no comment when Billy paused. Perhaps he could think of none adequate, or perhaps, after all, he had ceased to be amazed. He merely said slowly and thoughtfully, "Of course the dancer\'s story is all you really have to go upon. You had better bring her here."
"Nothing easier," Billy declared, and thinking a cab as prompt as a telephone he drove briskly off.
The hotel held a shock for him. Fritzi Baroff was gone. She had gone the evening before, the clerk reported, consulting the register, and she had paid her bill. As he had not been the one on duty then he knew nothing more about it. She had left no address.
Ultimately the clerk who had been on duty was unearthed in the labyrinths of the hotel\'s backgrounds, but he could supply very little further except the certainty that she had paid her bill in person, and the vague belief that she had been accompanied. This belief was companioned by a hazy notion that some one had called on her that evening.
Even Billy\'s sense of humor was unstirred by the half-cynical sympathy of the night-clerk\'s gaze; Billy didn\'t feel a laugh anywhere within him. He was balked. The dancer had vanished with her story, and that story was essential to the consul. Like a fool he must return empty-handed with this yarn of her disappearance and the consul would be justified in declaring that he had no actual proof to act upon. Which was precisely what the consul did, but he offered, impressed with Billy\'s earnestness, "to take the matter up," with the proper authorities.
It seemed the best that could be done. Billy urged him to prompt action, and to himself he promised some prompt action of a totally unofficial character. He knew now what he was going to do, or rather he thought he did, for the day still held its unsettling surprises for him, and as he set forth on business bent that afternoon he found himself besieged by a skinny little boy in tattered blue robes, who danced around him with a handful of dirty postcards.
"Be off," said Billy, in vigorous Arabic, and the little boy answered proudly, in most excellent English, "I am a messenger, sir. I am the boy who held the canoe that night. Buy a postcard, sir? Only six piastres a dozen, six piastres, Views of Egypt, the Sphinx, the Nile, the——"
Impatiently Billy cut him short.
"Never mind the bluff. No one is listening. What\'s your message?"
"The streets have ears, sir. Buy a postcard?... I have come from the palace. I brought in the bread. I—I got in under their nose while the big Mohammed was turned away without sight of his uncle," bragged the little Imp. "I am a clever boy, I. No one else so clever to find out things. The American man did well to come to me."
"What the devil, then, did you find out?"
"Five piastres a dozen, then, only five.... Go on walking, sir, I will run alongside. Keep shaking your head at me—very good.... I find out where she are."
"Where who are?"
The little braggart had roused Billy\'s suspicions. He determined to be wary.
"The young girl with the very light hair. Mohammed send me to ask of her. You know, sir," the little fellow insisted, hopping up and down beside him. "Only four a dozen—very cheap!" he screeched at him in a tone that must have carried for blocks. "I run in with the bread and take it to the kitchen where women are working. And I pretend make love to one very pretty girl, tell her how I come marry her when I old enough and make enough, and hold up piece money to show how rich I am. And the rest they think I just make game, but I whisper to her quick how much you pay her for news of that lady upstairs with the fair hair, and I give her some money. It are not much, sir. I promise her to come back with more."
"Go on," demanded Billy, stopping short. "What did she tell you?"
"Walk along, sir, walk along. Just half a dozen then—very cheap, very beautiful!" cried the little rascal with deep enjoyment of his r?le. Billy found his hands clenching frenziedly. The Imp proceeded, "She are much afraid, that girl, to say things, but I tell her how safe it is an\' I tell her you great big rich man who pay her well. I make her honest promise to come back with money—and she very poor girl. She whisper quick what she know, looking backward over shoulder like this." Turning his face about after this dramatic illustration the Imp caught sight of Billy\'s countenance, and rolled the rest o............