CHAPTER XIII
TAKING CHANCES
Late as he went to sleep, Billy B. Hill was up in good season that Sunday morning. The need for cautioning Fritzi Baroff haunted him, and he was not satisfied until he had had breakfast with that lively young lady and laid down the law to her upon the situation.
She was very loath not to talk about herself at first. She wanted to tell her tale to the papers and see if one of them would be hardy enough to publish the story of the outrageous incarceration; she wanted to cable the Viennese theater where she had played of her sensational detention—in short, she wanted to get all the possible publicity out of her durance vile and to advertise her small person from Cairo to the Continent.
But Billy was urgent. "You just bide a wee on this publicity stunt," he demanded. "Cable your manager and press agent all you want to—but don't talk around the hotel here—and whatever you do and whatever you say, keep Miss Beecher's name and mine out of it."
He was very decided about that, and because she was very grateful to him and because she liked him and because she lacked other friends and other pocketbooks, the little Viennese held her tongue as directed. And she borrowed as much money as Billy would lend her, and drove off to the small shops which were open that day, and found a frock or two and a hat which she declared passable, and returned transfigured to the hotel and rendered the table where she lunched with Billy, with the air of possessing him, quite the most conspicuous in the room. The ladies gazed past them with chill eyes; the men stared covertly, with the surreptitious envy with which even the most virtuous of men surveys a lucky devil. And Billy sadly perceived that he was acquiring a reputation.
He did not blame Miss Falconer for turning haughtily aside as he and his vivid companion went past them in the veranda. But he did think her disdainful lack of memory a little overdone.
His cheeks were still red as he looked away from her and encountered the direct eyes of the girl who followed her.
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Hill?" said Lady Claire, as clear as a bell. "It's such a nice day, isn't it?" she added, a little breathlessly, as she went by.
"It's much better than it was," said Billy, and he turned back to open the door for her.
"Claire!" said Miss Falconer from within.
"Coming, dear," said Lady Claire, and with a little smile of defiant friendliness at the young American she was gone.
But the memory of that plucky little smile stayed right with Billy. The girl liked him, she liked him in spite of his unknown antecedents, his preposterous picture, his conspicuous companion. She had a mind of her own, that tall English girl with the lovely eyes and the proud mouth. In a warm surge of friendliness his thoughts went out to her, and he wished vaguely that he could let her know how fine he thought she was.
Within an hour that vague wish came true. He had packed Fritzi off, with a newly acquired maid, for a drive up and down the safe public streets and he had re-interviewed the one-eyed man and the native chauffeur that the one-eyed man introduced for the evening's work, and he was at one of the public desks in the writing room, inditing a letter to his aunt, which, he whimsically appreciated, might be his last mortal composition, and reflecting thankfully that it was highly unnecessary to make a will, when Lady Claire strolled into the room and over to a desk.
She tried a pen frowningly, and Billy jumped to offer another. "Oh, thank you," she said. She seemed not to have seen him before.
"That was rather nice of you, you know," he said gravely.
She looked up at him.
"I'm not really a wolf," he continued, the gravity surrendering to his likable, warm smile, "and I'm glad you recognized it."
Her reply took him unawares. "I think you're splendid," said Lady Claire. "I thought so in the bazaars when you came to my help and stood up to that beastly German."
"Oh, he wasn't such a beastly German, after all," Billy deprecated. "And here I've had a message to you from him and never remembered to give it. The fellow called on me the next morning in gala attire and offered every apology and satisfaction in his power—even the satisfaction of the duel, if I desired it. I didn't. But I promised to express his deep apologies to you. He was horribly shocked at himself. He'd been drinking, he said, to forget a 'sadness' which possessed him. His lady love had failed to keep her tryst and life was very dark."
"I don't wonder at her," said Lady Claire unforgivingly. "I'm sure he must have been horrid to her!"
"I rather think she was horrid to him," Billy reflected, "although she was a very sprightly looking lady love. He showed me her picture in the back of his watch.... By George!" he uttered violently.
"What is it?"
"Oh—an idea, that's all. Something I must really attend to before I—this afternoon, I mean. But there's no hurry about it," he added cheerily.
Oh, Billy, Billy! Not even with his blood hot with thoughts of the evening's work, not even with his memory ridden with Arlee's gay witchery, could he keep his restless young eyes from laughing down at her. But there wasn't a notion in the back of his honest head as to the picture he was making in Lady Claire's eyes as he leaned, long-limbed, broad-shouldered, lazily at ease against the desk, his gray eyes very bright between their dark lashes, his dark hair sweeping back from his wide forehead.
"Are you sure?" she asked of him, with the smile that he drew from her. "Is it the inspiration for another picture?"
"No, no—that was my first and my last. That was the one purple bloom of my art. I have laid my brushes by.... But I'm keeping you from that letter you were going to write."
"It's just a few lines for Miss Falconer," Lady Claire unnecessarily explained. "We are going to drive out to the Gezireh Palace Hotel for tea, and she thought her brother might like to go out with us if he came in in time."
She did not add why Miss Falconer was unable to write her own notes, but slanted her blue-hatted head over the desk and then hastily blotted her brief lines and tucked the sheet into an envelope. Hesitantly she looked up at Billy.
"Have you been out to the Gezireh Palace?" she very innocently inquired.
"Alone," said Billy.
"It's very jolly there," said she. "It's so gay—and the music is quite good."
"H'm," meditated Billy. "The condemned man ate a hearty tea of Orange Pekoe and cress sandwiches," he reflected silently. He also reflected that Miss Falconer would be furious—and that invited him—and that time was interminable and that this expedition was as good a way of getting through the afternoon as any other. Thereupon he turned to the English girl, with a humorous challenge in his gaze. "I wonder if you and Miss Falconer would let this be my tea party?" he suggested.
"Miss Falconer will be delighted," said Lady Claire mendaciously.
The traces of that delight, however, lay beneath so well schooled an exterior that they were decidedly non-apparent. Nor did Robert Falconer's mien reveal any hint of joy when he returned to the hotel and found the two ladies starting with Billy. He joined them with rather the air of a watch dog, but that air soon wore away during the long drive under the spell of young Hill's frank friendliness and gay good humor. For Billy was extravagantly in spirits. Excitement stirred in him like wine; his blood was on fire with thoughts of the evening.
"It's the fool lark of the thing," he said, half apologetically, to Falconer's wonder when the two young men were alone for a minute on the Gezireh verandas. "Didn't you ever want to be a pirate?"
The red-headed young man nodded. "Yes, but this business doesn't make me feel like a pirate—more like a second-story man!"
"I've left letters with Fritzi Baroff," said Hill, "and if we're not back by morning, she's to go to the authorities with them."
"That won't do us any good," said the Englishman grimly.
But after the ladies returned it was a very merry-seeming tea party. Even Miss Falconer unbent to the artist, as she persisted in calling Billy, though he had dutifully enlightened her that engineering was his true and proper life work, and art but a random diversion, and she promised to show him the sketches which she had been making, and piled him with questions about his mysterious America.
And Lady Claire was very prettily animated, and rallied Falconer upon his absent-mindedness and told Billy tales of her English home and how her father had threatened to change the name of the Hall to Mädchenheim because there were five daughters of them. "Five girls near an age, Mr. Hill, and all poor as church mice!" she had blithely asserted.
But from what Billy heard of balls and hunters and "seasons," he gleaned that being poor as church mice, for these five titled girls, meant merely an effort in keeping up with the things they felt should be theirs by right divine. And as Billy listened, feeling the force of the girl's attraction, the charm of her serene confidence and the pleasant air of security and well-being that hedged her in, he stole a covert glance at Falconer's unrevealing countenance and reflected that it was rather a stormy day for that young man when he became entangled with the fortunes of little Miss Beecher. It was also a stormy day for himself, but he felt that storms belonged more naturally to his adventurous lot.
But it was characteristic of Falconer when once committed to a plan not to open his mind to the objections which besieged it. So that night, at the fall of dark, as the two young men motored forth together, he maintained a stolid resolution which refused to look back. The approach of the danger was tuning up his nerves, and whatever his common sense might think about it, his youth and pluck greeted the adventure with a quickening heart and a rash warmth of blood.
Both young men were resolute and confident. Either would have been more than human if he had not looked a trifle askance upon the other and wished to thunder that he had been able to go into it alone and to have tasted the intoxication of delivering the girl single-handed out of the den of thieves. But the success of the plan was paramount, as Billy reminded himself.
He found himself hoping wildly that she would see him as well as Falconer.
"She has probably forgotten all about me," he thought ruefully. "She won't remember that dance with me, nor that chat next morning. I'm just an Also Met. She won't even perceive me. She'll see that sandy-haired deliverer—and she'll tell him how right he was and how good to come after her——"
Thus jealousy darkly painted his undoing. "But, darn it, I had to ask him!" Thus he downed his ungenerous thoughts. "It needed two men at least—and besides, I don't want any handicap of gratitude in this."
They left the automobile in the Mohammedan graveyard with exact and impressive instructions. And then they stole back among the gloomy trees and ghostly tombs to where the canal washed the foot of the little terraces, and there the one-eyed man sat waiting in the canoe, a figure of profound misanthropy.
Silently he lifted a stricken but set countenance, and they climbed in and the three paddled off, approaching the back of the palace with wary eyes, for they were afraid that a guard might now be set upon the walls. But Billy had argued that Kerissen was unaware of Fritzi's knowledge of Arlee's identity; in fact she had at first supposed her a willing supplanter like herself, and so he would not be apprehensive of any of her revelations. And he did not dream that Fritzi's rescuers were interested in Arlee.
At the strip of path the canoe made softly to shore and the two young men climbed out, while the Arab remained in the canoe, his single eye peering into the darkness. This time Billy had provided three stout, but narrow, ladders, constructed of two poles nailed together with occasional cross pieces that gave narrow room for a foot. He set one of these in place against the wall now, grounding its ends deep in the soft earth, so that it would remain in readiness for any sudden descent. Then from the top of the wall they reconnoitered the scene before them.
It was very dark. The garden was full of blotting shadows, and the long wing of the harem lay almost in darkness, with only a faint beam from two adjacent windows to reveal a sign of life. Those windows were on the third story, next the angle made by the union of the banquet hall and the harem, and Billy's heart quickened as he recognized the location of the rose room.
"That's it—that's her room," he whispered excitedly to Falconer.
Falconer stared and nodded. "I wish that beastly hall wasn't in the way ahead of us. I'd like to see what lights are in the windows in that court beyond."
"We might both go and take a look," said Billy doubtfully, "but I guess you had better make, straight for your roofs. It wouldn't do to have us both nabbed. Do you hear anything?"
They listened, crouching flat upon the wall, straining their eyes toward the palace. There was a high wind blowing and above them the leaves of the palm trees were slapping against each other, and below the shrubs and flowers were stirring restlessly. But the noise of the wind, they felt, was helpful to cover the sounds of their approach.
"Why can't I make my way around on top of this wall and climb on the roofs from the start?" Falconer questioned, and Billy answered, "I asked her that. She said it couldn't be done. You'd have to climb through some unsafe rubbish. The best way is down and up again in that angle that she showed me. Shall we start?"
The same impulse made both men examine their revolvers, then drop them in readiness into their right-hand coat pockets. They moved along the top of the wall till they reached the angle with the wall on their right, and then they lowered the same knotted rope which Billy had used the night before, but now another rope added to it made it into a rope ladder. Suspending that over the top of the wall by iron hooks, they slipped down it, each with a pole ladder in his arms, and with another hook of iron they drove the ends down into the earth, so that the rope would not wave out in the wind and either betray them or become displaced.
It was insecure enough, anyway, but they felt it ought to be left in readiness for a flight that might have no second to waste. Now, with eyes sharply challenging the shadows, they stole along the edge of the palace.
Staring up at the building, Billy stopped. "Here's a place a story and a half high—you could almost climb up by those carvings without any ladder. And there's the next higher roof back of it—and then you must go there to the left."
"I can make it," said Falconer, surely. "Now how much time shall I allow you for your sawing—fifteen minutes?"
"Guess you'd better," Billy reflected, and they compared watches.
It was tremendously difficult to arrive at any sort of concerted action on this bewildering expedition, but they were hoping to achieve it. Their plan had the simplicity of all desperate measures. One from below and one from above they were to make their way to that rose room and fight the way out with the girl. They considered it wiser to come from two directions, for if one were discovered and the alarm raised, the other had still a chance of getting off with Arlee, and if one were trying to escape, the other could cover his flight. They had drawn straws for their positions, and Billy had been slightly relieved that the entrance from below, which he considered a trifle more difficult, had fallen to him. He felt responsible, as well as he might, for Falconer's neck.
Now he steadied one narrow ladder of poles while Falconer crept up it and then drew it up after him; and after a few moments of waiting, crouched in the shadow, Billy saw the Englishman's figure reappear against the sky on top of a higher roof. The route over the old buildings had been found, so Billy turned and crept forward along the wall, carrying the last long ladder of poles in his hand. It was an unwieldy thing to carry and it distracted his attention harassingly.
"My job," said he to himself, "is evidently to make a racket and draw their fire from below while that red-headed chap carries Arlee off from above. Well, I hope to the Lord he does. When I think of her here——"
But it was unnerving to think of her here, so he didn't. He kept his mind steadily on the plan. He had reached the stone steps that led from the garden to the harem now, and laying down his pole-like ladder he slipped up them and turned the handle.
But the door was locked. Fearful lest the grating of the knob should have roused some watcher, he ran down the steps and hurried into the shadow of the banquet hall, where he stood close beside a pillar until he satisfied himself of the objects in the court beyond. He saw an edge of light along the crack of a closed door to the left on the ground floor of the selamlik, and in the higher stories above that a couple of windows showed a pale illumination. On the right, in the harem, only one window betrayed a ray of light. Altogether the old pile was as gloomy and gruesome as a tomb.
Billy stared across the court to where the columned vestibule, uniting the two Ls, indicated the door. He had been told a watchman slept there, but he could see nothing now but vague outlines of the arches of the vestibule. To the left was the open passage left for the entry of the automobile and horses, but this, too, was roofed so that a black shadow lay over it. But for that watchman Billy would have made his way to those doors to draw back the bars in readiness, but fearful of raising an alarm, he judged it was better to leave escape to chance and turn his attention to his entry.
He went back now for his ladder, and on the right side of the banquet hall, up under the arched roof, he discovered the wooden grating where Fritzi had described it. Against this wall he placed his ladder and climbed to the top, from which he could reach up and clasp the spindles of the grating above him.
He drew himself swiftly up to this, and the end of his pole was dislodged by his departure and fell to the inlaid pavement with a bang that seemed to him to carry to the farthest echoes of the sounding court. Instantly there was an answering clatter of steps.
Like a monkey Billy clung to the grating, thrusting his toes desperately into the first openings they could find, hanging on with his hands for dear life, holding himself as close up in the darkness as he could, and nearly twisting his neck off in the effort to watch what was going on below him.
The steps sounded nearer and nearer, and a huge Nubian in baggy bloomers and a short jacket was outlined in the court. His bare feet were thrust into clattering English shoes. He peered about him for a time, with one hand pointing the muzzle of a revolver. Billy caught the unpleasant gleam of it; then the man stepped in underneath the arches of the hall and made a slow way across it.
Directly in his path lay that fatal pole. It lay along the shadow of a column, but its end protruded beyond that shadow and would surely catch his eye. Billy tried to free his right hand to get at a gun of his own. To be caught ridiculously like this, clutching like a monkey on a stick——!
Another man, shorter and bent, in a long robe and carrying a lantern, now emerged from that door along whose closed edge Billy had noticed the crack of light, and the Nubian diverged toward him. The pole was unnoticed and the two joined forces and made a slow circle in the garden. Billy remembered that dangling rope, and with a thumping heart he hoped that it would hang unregarded in that shadowed angle, overrun with vines.
Apparently it did, for he heard the footsteps passing on without a stop as he clung there to his grating, his muscles cramped, his sockets strained. Slowly the two recrossed the hall, talking together in low gutturals and not apparently of unpleasant things, for a note of laughter sounded. They lingered in parley in the court, but by the time that he thought that he could not hang on a minute longer and would drop like a peach from the wall, they separated and each moved slowly away. The man with the lantern shut the door after him and all was darkness there and the great Nubian was blotted out beneath the arches of the vestibule.
The fear that Falconer was in the palace alone made Billy desperate. Clinging with his feet and his left hand, he drew out a clasp knife with a razor edge and hacked furiously at the delicate spindles and frail carved work of the screen till he could thrust one arm through the opening. The work was easier then, but he had to resist the temptation to seize the brittle stuff and break it in pieces, for fear the splintering sound would be too sharp.
Torn between caution and impatience he worked on, and as soon as the hole was large enough he pulled himself cautiously up and dropped over the edge into the cage-like balcony on the other side. The panel which separated it from the rest of the old room was half open, and he stepped through it into what appeared utter darkness.
He stood listening keenly, for he knew that he was standing below the rose room; the very spot where he was must be almost exactly beneath that secret passage outside the panel in the rose room's wall. Not a sound came down to him and he dared not wait longer, but turned to the left and passed through the arched doorway into the next great salon.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark he saw that it was not utter blackness, but that some wan light from the paler night without faintly penetrated through those jealously guarded windows—windows not so heavily screened, he had been told, as those upon the front of the palace, for these were upon the court. He found time for a flash of horror at this stifling barricade as he made his hurried way through the room and stepped out into the little anteroom beyond.
Here he paused, for he knew that to the left, ahead of him, was the curtained opening into the long salon upon the street, and within that, Fritzi had warned him, a eunuch sometimes slept or Seniha occasionally came from her small salon to play on the piano there and lingered apparently in wait. But no one seemed stirring, and Billy stole to the door on his right, opening on the encased stairs, and found it locked. Hurriedly he pried at it with a burglarious tool, and then a sudden outburst sounded overhead.
There was a racket of hurrying feet and then a muffled explosion of a shot. A hoarse voice yelled. Another shot, and then a thud of something falling.
Desperately Billy fired his gun into the lock. The noise did not matter now and might serve to divert the fight from Falconer. Throwing his weight against the shattered lock, he bounded up the narrow stairs and raced down the long hall to the door that was brightly gilded. From beyond, but fainter now, came the sounds of conflict. With a heart beating to suffocation he flung open the door and rushed into that room.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE ROSE ROOM
Candles flared on the table but not a figure greeted his eye. The room was deathly still; nothing stirred but the long draperies fluttering in the wind.
"Arlee!" he whispered in a voice strained with excitement. "Arlee Beecher, are you here?... Arlee!"
No voice answered. No motion revealed her. Only the candle flames danced drunkenly in a puff of air, flaunting their secret knowledge of the tenant they had lighted.
He darted to the tumbled bed and flung aside the covers; he looked beneath it and beneath the couch; he sent a candle's light traveling about the empty whiteness of the bath. No little figure, pitifully silenced, was, hidden there. The room was empty. And all the while that din sounded somewhere beyond them—running feet and strident yells.
"He's got her!" thought Billy, and first his heart leaped and then it sank. For very dear to that boy's heart had been the dream of rescuing her himself. And then he hated himself for that base envy. For what did it matter as long as little Arlee was safe, and that she was gone with Falconer, the empty room and the signs of hasty departure all spoke in witness. He wondered sharply how they had gone and whether he had better try to follow them and then thought it was shrewder to go back the way he had come and from below to try to guard whatever descent they must make.
He turned swiftly and crossed to the door. With a hand outstretched toward it he caught suddenly, beneath all the distant din, the click of a sliding lock, and he whirled about, dropping his right hand into his pocket, to see a pale face staring at him from the other side of the bed.
"Not a move—or you drop!" said Captain Kerissen. The candle lights glinted on the muzzle of a gun leveled steadily at him.
"Stay where you are," the Captain added, and Billy stayed, and through the dusk the two men stood eyeing each with a glare of hatred. But Kerissen's eyes held hatred triumphant.
"So, Monsieur," said the Turk. "This is the midnight call you gentlemen pay—in the chamber of my wife."
"Your wife!" Billy gave a snort of unbelief. "She says you did not marry her!"
"When you are found dead—if you are found," the other continued, looking lovingly along the sight, "there will not even be a question into the cause. You will be carted off like carrion—carrion that prowled too near."
"Just the same you've made a mistake," said Billy in a dogged and argumentative tone. "I'm not interested in visiting any wife of yours. The lady I'm representing says you didn't marry her. But she says you did keep back most of her jewelry and she's giving the story to the papers to-morrow unless I return with the stuff to-night."
He could not guess what impression this speech was making.
"I am not interested in your stories, Monsieur," the Turk returned blandly. "I am interested only in your dispatching—which I feel should be prolonged beyond the mercy of a shot."
"Look here, I'm not a common robber and you know it," said Billy, and his voice sounded rough and angry. "I'm here to collect the property of the lady you detained here, while she was under contract in Vienna. I don't want anything more than belongs to her. She left——"
"With a great deal more upon her than she brought! But am I to suppose, Monsieur, that you have made your way here, at some personal inconvenience, I should say, to discuss the generosity of my remuneration to the lady?" There was a tense silence and the Captain continued in a low, almost purring voice, "You do not appear, even now, to comprehend the thing you have done. I shall do my best to make you comprehend—and before I have finished it may be that I shall have a clearer explanation of this impulsive call. You have no notion, Monsieur, how certain things unloose the tongue—but you shall discover."
Billy saw his white teeth show in a deadly smile. Back of him a dark, heavy figure appeared and the Captain, without turning his head or moving his eyes or his gun from Billy, gave some rapid directions in Turkish and the figure disappeared. It occurred to Billy like a flash that from that secret passage where the figure had appeared there was a panel into the room on the right and that room had a door opening into the hall outside. The next moment he felt the door behind him open.
Then he pulled the trigger of that gun in his pocket in which his hand had been so lightly resting. The Captain seemed to fire the same instant, but Billy had jumped aside as he shot his own gun and he heard the bullet singing past his ear, and now, with his revolver out of his pocket, he shot again with an aim so true that the other man's right hand gave a spasmodic jerk and the revolver went spinning to the ground.
Across the room he hurled himself, springing from the onslaught of the assailant entering behind him, and thrusting the cursing Captain from his path he leaped through the sliding panel. The lock clicked home and he paused even in that moment of hammering pulses and pounding heart to fumble in the darkness to shut that other panel into the next room, remembering Fritzi's warning that those locks needed a key to open them from within. The minute's delay for the key would mean many minutes for him.
He stumbled against the tiny stairs that led to the tower room through which Falconer had descended, but he did not dash up those stairs for he heard the noise of feet overhead, as if returning from pursuit, and he darted straight on through the long, narrow, unlighted corridor, running like a hare.
At the other end he crashed against a half-open door and fell headlong down a flight of stairs. From his astonished fingers the revolver went clattering and though he picked himself up, battered but unbroken, at the foot, he dared not waste a minute to go back and hunt for the gun in the dark. He was totally at a loss for directions; he had expected to find himself in the Captain's rooms, and the stairs were unknown. Now he could just make out a door ahead of him and sent it flying open, smash in the face of an astonished black boy who went stumbling backwards.
Out went Billy's fist and caught the unguarded chin a staggering blow, and as the boy reeled back he flung one hurried glance about the big, lamp-lit chamber in which he found himself, the room evidently of Captain Kerissen, and darted to an arsenal of weapons that glinted against the inlaid panels. Wrenching down the shortest scabbard he jerked out a most villainous looking two-edged knife and gripping this piratical weapon he bounded out the door, fled through the dim hall to his right, rounded a corner, to the right again, hearing the sounds of pursuit louder and louder now behind him, shot through a vast reception hall and plunged down a flight of stairs.
From the darkness below a figure rose up to receive him with a grip like iron. Billy's right arm was doubled at his side; the blade of that villainous old dagger was pressed against the yielding softness of the fellow's sash, but for the life of him Billy could not drive home that knife against the human flesh. With a convulsive movement he tore himself from those gorilla arms and sent up a desperate kick, then leaped past the staggering man, and with the unused knife in his teeth, he tore at the bars of the great gate in the wall at his left. The bars were stiff and primitive and resisted his furious fingers, and the big gate-keeper, gasping for a moment against the stairs, suddenly straightened and sprang toward him.
"Here's one hero that didn't open the door 'in the nick of time'!" raced through Billy's grimly humorous mind, as he dodged the savage thrust of a knife the man had drawn and turned and scuttled across the court with the other on his heels. Through the arches he darted and then down into the garden, sprinting as he had never sprinted before, on, on to the southwest angles of the wall, thanking Heaven fervently, as every step outdistanced his pursuer, that the man had evidently no gun.
The rope ladder was still there, blown free at the bottom now and waving merrily in the wind. He snatched at it, dropping his knife in his pocket, praying that the top hooks had not become dislodged, and after him came the other man, hand over hand. Billy drew up his legs in a horrid fear of having them gripped or hacked at, and gained the top just as the other's head appeared below, his knife gleaming in his teeth.
Like a flash Billy drew out his knife and cut the rope. There was a wild yell from below and a screech of curses and imprecations following a rather sickening sounding thud, which persuaded Billy, peering down from above, that the victim's lungs at least were unimpaired, and then to his great amazement a shot went winging up past his ear.
"Had a gun all the time—too fighting mad to think of it—knife more natural!" he thought amazedly, sliding down the other side in a jiffy and then jerking his ladder down flat on the ground.
Out in the shadows the one-eyed man was paddling earnestly to safety. The shot so close at hand had been his sign for departure; he did not look back at Billy's shrill whistling nor his wilder shouts, and as the yells on the other side of the wall were bringing the inmates of the palace upon him, Billy had no more time for persuasion.
Off went his shoes and out into the canal he flung them, then headlong he plunged into the dark and uninviting water and struck out to the right, in the same direction in which the canoe was going, keeping carefully in the shadow of the bank, on the other side.
In a few moments the canoe was lost from sight and Billy was left alone, swimming between two steep walls of old palaces, weighed down by his tweeds, and maddened through and through with his inability to wring the neck of the one-eyed canoeist. The distance seemed unending to his slow progress but at last the palms of the cemetery appeared upon the right hand bank, and he struck across the widening waters and climbed out on the first foot of the graveyard that presented itself.
A dozen rods farther on the Arab was awaiting him in the canoe. Billy's mood did not invite conversation and he did not linger now for the other's explanations, but calling to him to wait he made in through the cemetery, dodging warily from tomb to tomb, till he reached the entrance of the main road.
The motor was gone. He satisfied himself of that, and a wave of rejoicing surged through him. That motor was to wait till one or the other arrived with the girl and then leave with all speed, while the other was to be left to the slower canoe. He was sure, now, that Falconer had succeeded in carrying the thing through and Billy's heart warmed to him. Then, for the first time, he felt something numb and queer about his left arm and putting his hand on it he found the sopping sleeve was torn and a warm ooze of blood welling through the cold water from the canal.
"Gosh, the chap winged me!" was his startled exclamation. "Feels as if it's going to sleep—glad it didn't go back on me in the ditch, there." Then he pressed back into the shadows for he saw a figure edging forward beyond the corner of a tomb. After a moment's hesitation it came directly toward him. He saw it was Robert Falconer.
Foreboding gripped him and he could scarcely keep himself from shouting his eager question, but he hurried forward till the two stood face to face and then, "Where is she? Did you get her?" burst from him, and "Have you got her? Is she all right?" came at the same instant from Falconer.
Blankly they stared at each other and a cold sense of failure went over and over Billy like a sea. His voice shook with this new, sickening fear. "Didn't you see her at all?"
"Did you?" counter-demanded Falconer, and Billy stammered, "Why no I—I found the room empty. And I thought you were safely off with her."
"Safely off!" said Falconer grimly. "I got in all right, though there must be a new lock on the door of that room up top, but I made some noise about it and ran plump into a fellow half way down the stairs. I threw him the rest of the way down, and he fired and brought a couple of others swarming up at me but I got out on the roofs again and gave them the slip. They went tearing back along the wing toward the garden the way I'd come and I went toward the street and got down."
"Got down! How did you get down?"
"Over those bay-window places," said the Englishman briefly. "I tied that cord I had to one of the doddering old cornices to start with. It wasn't any trick at all."
"Three stories," Billy shot in.
"And you'd no better luck, it seems?" Falconer inquired.
"No, I came up from below and found the room empty—but disheveled, so I thought you were off with her sure. And just then the Captain came in the panel places—just back from chasing you along the roof, I guess, for I'd been hearing the racket—and another fellow with him and we had a scrimmage and I got away through the men's wing."
"You're wet."
"That was a bit of canal bathing—our Arab put off with the canoe when I was needing it badly. I left him waiting here all right, however, and came here to find the motor gone."
"Naturally—being paid in advance."
"Only half paid."
"Half pay was enough for him. I knew it would be.... The thing was all rot in the first place."
Billy was too bitter of soul to reply. He was remembering what he ought to have done. He ought to have put that pistol to the Captain's head and forced him through the palace inch by inch.... He wondered if it would do any good to go back. His arm was rousing from its numbness, however, and raising a little racket all its own.
"We might as well get out of this," the Englishman advised, and Billy's reason acquiesced in spite of his rage. In silence they went down to the water's edge and embarked. The homeward course, from caution, was not past the palace but upstream through a remote and unknown region where they finally landed upon a bank and struck through unfamiliar and unfriendly looking byways toward the city.
Their walk was silent. Fierce gloom enveloped Billy; furious chagrin bestrode him. Chump that he was to have jumped at such positive conclusions! He ought to have stayed there. If only that second Turk had not been coming up behind him! He could think now of a number of brilliant ways out of his difficulties.... Morosely he trudged on through the interminable streets, his chilly wetness like an outward aspect of his gloom-soused mind.
He could not bear to think of Arlee. He felt now that, warned by Falconer's approach from above, they had snatched her from her room and hidden her away. He wondered if he deceived the Captain about the motives for his presence. He wondered what in the world could be done now—if all effort was to resolve itself into the futility of an official search-party. He wondered where in all that baffling prison Arlee was hidden.
Upon that tormenting question he unlocked his lips. "Where is she?" he muttered worriedly. "That's the question—where is she?"
"In Alexandria."
Plainly the Englishman's wrath had been smoldering. Billy turned upon him fiercely.
"In that palace, I tell you."
"So you say."
"And I say, too," and Billy's exasperation strained its bonds, "that if you don't believe she was there—if you think I got up this little party to while away an idle evening, why it was most uncommonly good of you to come! But I can't think why you did it if you weren't convinced of the necessity. Certainly it was not from love of me."
"Rather not."
"That goes double.... But you couldn't deny the facts and you did come. Because we failed doesn't change the facts at all. She's there—only where? Had we better go straight to the consul now?"
"I think," said Falconer coldly, "that we had better telegraph the Evershams to see if they have had any word from her before we stir up any hue and cry."
"All right," said Billy, and then he gave a short laugh. "Lord, we shall be quarreling like a couple of backyard dames next ... Of course, we're chagrined. It's poor satisfaction to reflect that we did our best—and if you are still uncertain about Miss Beecher's danger there I can't blame you for seeing the folly of the business."
After this effort of pleasantness Billy subsided into the cab that was most welcomely discovered, rousing after some minutes of violent progress to change their direction to the English doctor's.
"Winged," he said briefly, to Falconer's question. "Watchman chap as I was getting over the wall. Nothing wrong, I know, but it feels like—fire," he substituted.
Falconer was instantly concerned, but his sympathy went against the grain. Billy was too stirred for consolation. At the doctor's he refused to have Falconer enter with him.
"No use in having both of us traced if there is to be any trouble about this," he said with decision. "Go ahead and telegraph the Evershams and get an answer as soon as possible."
He had no earthly belief in that answer, and great, therefore, was his astonishment when, as he was walking the floor with his tingling arm in the early morning hours, a telegram was sent to him which Falconer had just received. His wire had caught the boat at Rhoda where it tied up for the night and Mrs. Eversham had promptly answered.
"We have heard from Miss Beecher," she said, "and she may join us later. Her address just Cook's, Alexandria."
CHAPTER XV
ON THE TRAIL
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 rôle. 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 of his narration into one speedy sentence.
"She are gone," he cried.
"Gone?"
"Took away.... Take these cards, sir, stop and look at them.... Yes, she are took away. It happen very quick; early that morning after the other lady go in the night. Everyone much excited that night, great noise about, and no one know just what happen. But the Captain give orders quick, and early the motor car is ready and the strange girl go away. Old woman go, too. Nobody know where."
"That would be Sunday morning," Billy cried excitedly. "Are you sure there is no mistake? There were lights in that room on Sunday night."
"I tell what the girl tell. She are very honest girl," the Imp insisted. "She say the other lady run away with her lover an' Captain afraid the new lady has a lover so he send her away quick."
"But he didn't go himself?"
"No, he have something with his reg-reglement," gulped the Imp hastily, "that day and he stay and he there now—but now he sick."
"What's the matter?"
"I don't know, sir, but I know the doctor comes because she say to me to come back and say I am boy from doctor with medicine, and if I don't see her I must say I lost that medicine and go away, and come again as I can till I bring that money to her. She are very much afraid, sir."
Billy shuffled the postcards with absent hands and stared down at them with unseeing eyes. She was gone—and the Captain was not with her! That much at least was gain. And the fellow was here sick from his shot hand, apparently. "I hope gangreen sets in," he said between his teeth.
"You are pleased with me, sir?" the Imp was demanding. "You are glad of so much clever boy? And you give me that money now to give that girl? I make her most honest promise—and you see, sir, I am very honest boy, I tell you all I know and I ask nothing of price yet. I know that you are honest American man."
At that Billy came out of his brown study and praised the tattered little Imp with hearty earnestness. He saw no reason to doubt the boy's story. If he had been trying to invent something in order to make capital out of him he would hardly have invented that story of Arlee's departure, for that put an immediate end to further remunerative investigations in the palace. Of course Billy might be mistaken, and the boy might be mistaken, but one had to leave something to probabilities. He was very generous with the boy, and the droll little brown face was lined with grins. Most naïvely he besought that the American would not reveal the extent of his donations to Mohammed, the one-eyed man, as the boys had promised their employer a just one-half.
It was the first laugh Billy had enjoyed in a long time. His spirits were vastly lightened by the news that Arlee was out of the palace where the Captain was staying. Fritzi had optimistically informed him that the Turk's courtship could be made most lengthy, but that had been a sadly slender hope and the picture of Arlee playing such a fearful game was simply horrible to him. So his relief at her departure was intense, although it complicated more and more the hope of speedy rescue.
For where was she now? In Cairo? In some of the outlying villages? He felt swamped by the number of things were to be found out immediately. He must find where that big gray motor went so early on Sunday—surely there were people who had remarked it if they could only be found and induced to talk! And he must find where the Captain had other homes or palaces where he would be likely to hide a girl. And he must find out where the Captain was every instant of the day and night.
That was the most important thing of all. For the Captain unless delayed by extreme illness, or held back by a caution which Billy judged was foreign to his nature, would not wait long before he joined Arlee. He had evidently stayed behind for some review of his troops and also to be au courant of whatever stir would result from Fritzi Baroff's reappearance in the world, and be on hand to disarm whatever further suspicions would result from it. The lights in the rose room that last night and the used look of the room, puzzled Billy, but he concluded that the Captain liked the room and there was a good deal in that palace that had better be left to no imagination whatever.
So back to the hotel went Billy to enter upon a period of waiting that frayed his nerves to an utter frazzle. Inaction was horrible to him, and now it was inevitable. He must wait for word from that agile web of little spies which the one-eyed man was weaving about the Captain's palace, and be ready to start whenever the word came.
He slept with his clothes on that Monday night, but he slept heavily for he was tired and his arm was no longer painful. The tear of wound he called a scratch was healing swiftly.
Tuesday morning passed in the same maddening suspense. Captain Kerissen rode out that morning but only to the parade ground, where he took part in a review with his troops. It was noticed that his right hand was bandaged, but the injury could not have been severe for his thumb was free from the bandage and he occasionally used that hand upon the reins. It was the bright eyes of the Imp that were sure of that.
In the afternoon the Captain went again to the barracks and then to the palace of one of the colonels in his regiment. Then he went home.
Utterly disgusted with this waiting game Billy began to dress for dinner. All lathered for a shave he stood testing his razor on a hair when his unlocked door was violently opened and a panting little figure darted across to him. It was the Imp.
"Sir, he goes, he goes upon the minute," he panted out. "He is in the station. Quick!"
Like a streak of lathered lightening Billy went for his clothes. A centipede could have been no more active. He jerked up his suspenders; he jerked on a shirt; he jerked on a coat; he was wiping his face as he darted through the halls and down the stairs. No lift had speed enough for his descent. At the desk he flung some gold pieces at the clerk, cried something about being called out of the city, and asked to have his room kept; then he was down the steps and into the carriage that the Imp had magically summoned.
The drive to the station was a series of escapes. Between jolts the Imp gasped out the rest of the story. The Captain had ridden out in the automobile. The Imp had given chase and so had the one-eyed man, also on guard, and by dint of running for dear life they had kept the motor in sight until the crowded city streets were reached and a series of delays enabled them to catch up with it. As soon as they saw the motor stop before the station the boy had rushed for Billy while the Arab remained to shadow the Captain and learn his destination.
They themselves were at the station now, and Billy was still tying his cravat. Now they jumped down and pressed through the confusion, dodging dragomans, porters, drivers and hotel runners and making a vigorous way past hurrying travelers and through bewildered blockades of tourist parties. Suddenly over the bobbing heads they saw the face they sought. A single eye glared significance upon them. An uplifted hand beckoned furiously.
"Assiout," whispered the one-eyed man as Billy reached him. "Assiout. That one goes to Assiout on the night express."
"My ticket? Got a ticket for me?"
Upturned palms bespoke the absence of ticket and the Arab's deep regret. "The price was much. I waited——"
Billy was off. There was no chance of his getting past that stolid guard without a ticket and he charged toward the seller's window, where a line of natives was forming for another train.
"Siut!" he shouted over their heads, and scattering silver and smiles and apologies he crowded past the motley line to the window and fairly snatched the miles of green ticket from the Copt's quick fingers.
He was the last man through the gate, and as he darted through the clicking of compartment doors was heard with the parting cries of the guards and the shouts of dragomans and porters. It was a train de luxe where the sleeping sections had long been reserved, but to accommodate the crowded travel ordinary compartment cars had been added at the last minute, and it was at one of these that Billy grasped, as the wheels were moving faster and faster. A gold piece caused a guard to unlock the first compartment door, although it said, "Dames Seules," and "Ladies Only" in large letters.
It was not a corridor train and the compartment was already filled, and as Billy wormed his way, not into the nearest corner, for that was not yielded to him, but into the modicum of space accorded between two stout and glaringly grudging matrons, he became aware from the hostile stares that his entrance had not been solitary.
Between his legs the Imp was coiling.
"I made a sneak with you," the boy whispered. "I say I your dragoman, sir. You will be glad. You need such bright boy in Assiout."
Billy thought it highly probable that he would. But the ladies neither needed nor desired him now, and ringed in by feminine disgust the two scorned intruders sat silent hour after hour while the train went rushing south through the increasing darkness of the night.