The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 14

Falconer stroked his small mustache and shot a look at Billy out of the corners of his eyes which expressed his distinct annoyance at these intrusive demands.

"I don't remember to have met you," said he slowly.

"You haven't. I know your name, but you don't know mine. I am William B. Hill."

"Ah--Behill."

"No--_B._ Hill. The B is an initial."

"Of what?" said the other casually, and Billy's cheeks grew suddenly warm.

"Of my middle name," said he, with steady composure. "If we are to do any team-work you will have to let it go at the William and the Hill."

"What team-work do you suggest?"

"Find out where she went yesterday. Find out where she is now. What worries me," he burst out, with ungovernable uneasiness, yet with a hint of humor at his own extravagant imaginings, "is her talking to that Turk fellow yesterday--that Captain Kerissen, I think she called him. She had told me the night before that he was going to get her some ball tickets or other, and I didn't think anything of it, but yesterday I thought he had his nerve to come and call upon her. You see, I pa.s.sed through the hall and saw them talking. I went out to the veranda and after he had gone I came in again, but she was nowhere in sight. Then I went back to the veranda, and in a few moments she came out, in white with a rose on her hat, and went off in a car that was ready. Of course Kerissen wasn't in the car, and I haven't any proof of his connection with the thing, but he might easily have induced her to look at some mosque or other off the 'beaten track'----"

"But she returned, for later she sent that telegram from the station," Falconer argued.

Billy was silent. Then he burst out, "But all the same there is a mystery to this thing.... She--she's too confoundedly young and pretty to run around alone in this painted jade of a city."

"This city has law and order--much more of them than there are in your national hotbeds of robbery and murder."

"H'm--well, I don't hold any brief for Chicago--I suppose Chicago is the target--so I won't defend that. But I've heard stories."

"Queer ones, I should say."

"_Devilish_ queer ones!... How about that young Monkton or Monkhouse who dropped out of things last winter?"

Falconer looked annoyed. "Oh, there are rumors----"

"Yes, rumors that he flirted with a Turkish lady--that he was on horseback just outside her carriage during the jam at the Kasr-el-Nil bridge, and they looked and smiled and afterwards met in a shop. And rumors that she gave him a _rendezvous_ at her home and that he told another man about it at the club, who warned him sharply, and he only laughed.... But it's no rumor that he disappeared. He's gone, all right, and n.o.body knows where he went, and n.o.body seems to want to know. Officially they said he was drowned out swimming--or lost in a sandstorm riding in the desert--or spiked on top of an obelisk or something equally reasonable--but, privately, people say other things.... No international law intrudes into the Turkish woman question."

"What of it?" Falconer looked stubborn. "I daresay the fellow received his deserts.... But the case hardly applies--what?"

"Well--it makes one feel that anything can happen here--that the city is quicksand where a chance step would engulf one." Billy stared frowningly out on the vivid street ahead of him. A pretty English bride and her soldier husband were out exercising their dogs. Two ladies in a victoria were advertising their toilettes. A blond baby toddled past with his black nurse. It was all very peaceful and charming. It did not look like quicksand.... Into the picture came a one-eyed man with a stuffed crocodile on his head, stalking slowly along, scanning the veranda with his single, penetrating eye, calling his wares in harsh gutturals, and with him came suddenly the sense of that strange background before which all this bright tourist life was played, that dark watching, secret East, curious and incalculable.

Falconer folded his paper with a sharp crackle that recalled young Hill's wandering thought. "That's all very well, but it doesn't apply," he observed, with conviction.

"Then where is she?" Billy was bluntly belligerent.

The other put his paper in his pocket. "In Alexandria, to be sure, and not at all pleased, either, to have you bring her name into such questioning." He looked squarely at Billy as he said that, and the eyes of the two young man met and exchanged a secret challenge of hostility.

Billy rose. "Oh, all right," he returned. "I daresay I am as much a fool as you take me for.... She may be all right. But if not--I thought I'd give you a chance to take a hand in it."

"The sporting chance," said Falconer, with an appreciable smile.

"I'm much obliged--but I don't at all share your misgivings.... And what in the world do you propose to do about it?"

For a minute Billy's gaze blankly interrogated the sunlit distances.

His eyes were fixed, but empty; his forehead knitted in an uncertain frown. Then quite suddenly he turned and flashed at Falconer a look of odd and unforeseen decision.

"I'm going to buy a crocodile," he imparted, with a wide, boyish grin. "I'm going to buy a crocodile of a one-eyed man."

Stolidly Falconer eyed his departing back. Stolidly, definitely, comprehensively, he p.r.o.nounced judgment. "Mad," said he. "Mad as the March Hare."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR

That stealthy touch brought Arlee half upright, shot with ghastly alarms. Her heart stopped beating; it stood still in the cold clutch of terror. The breath seemed to have left her body.

Once more she felt the hands gropingly upon her. It came from the back side of her bed, reaching apparently from the very wall. And then she heard a voice whispering, "Be still--I do not hurt you. Be still."

It was a woman's voice, soft, sibilant, hushed, and the frozen grip of fear was broken. She was trembling now uncontrollably.

"Who is there?"

"S-s.h.!.+" came the warning response, and then, her eyes staring into the shadowy recess, she saw the curtains at the back side of the bed were parting as a figure appeared between them.

"Give me a box, a book--somethings to put here in this lock,"

commanded the voice peremptorily, and in a daze Arlee found herself extending a magazine across the bed toward the half-seen figure, who turned and busied herself about the curtains a moment, then came straight across the bed into the room beside Arlee.

"Now you see who I am," said the astonis.h.i.+ng intruder calmly.

Mutely Arlee shook her head, seeing only a figure about her own height clad in a dark negligee. Dumfounded she stood watching while her visitor deliberately lighted a candle.

"So--that is better," she observed, and in the light of the tiny taper between them the two stood facing each other.

Arlee saw a girl some years older than herself, a small, plump, rounded creature, with a flaunting and insouciant prettiness. Her eyes were dark and bright, her babyish lips were full and scarlet, her nose was whimsically uptilted. Dark hair curled closely to the vivid face and fell in ringlets over the white neck.

"You don't know me?" she said in astonishment at Arlee's eyes of wonder. "He has not told you?" Incredulity, impertinent and mocking, darted out of the dark eyes. "What you think then--you what got my room?"

"Your room?" Arlee echoed faintly. She flung a quivering hand toward the bed. "How did you get in here? I locked the door----"

"You see how I came--I came by the panel," She waited a moment, watching the wide blue eyes before her, the parted lips, the white cheeks in which the blood was slowly stealing back, and incredulity gave way to astonished acceptance. "You don't know that, either?

That is very funny."

"Did you lock it?" was Arlee's next breathless question. "What was that you said about putting in a magazine? Did you leave it open?"

The other girl reached quickly and caught her arm, as Arlee turned toward the bed. "No, no, if it goes shut we cannot open it inside,"

she warned. "It does not open this side unless you have the key. It opens from without. But he will not come in now--he is at the Khedive's palace. We are all right."

"But I want to get away," cried Arlee. She turned upon this other girl great eyes of pitiful entreaty, eyes where the dark shadows about them lay like cruel bruises on the white flesh. "I must get away at once. Won't you help me?"