The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 23

But before they got to a hotel there was an obstacle or two to be overcome. A lady in Mohammedan wraps might not be exactly _persona grata_ at fas.h.i.+onable hotels at midnight. Casting off the wrap Fritzi revealed herself in a little pongee frock that appeared to be suitable for traveling, and with two veils and Billy's cap for a foundation she produced an effect of headgear not unlike that of some bedraped tourists.

"I arrived on the night train," she stated as they drew up before the s.h.i.+ning hotel. "It is late now for that night train--but we waited for my luggage, which you will observe is lost. So I pay for my room in the advance--I think you had better give me some money for that--I have nothing but these," and she indicated her flas.h.i.+ng diamonds.

"My name," said Billy, handing over some sovereigns with the first ray of humor since her revelation to him, "my name, if you should care to address me, is Hill--William B. Hill."

"William B. Hill," she echoed with an air of elaborate precision, and then flashed a saucy smile at him as he helped her out of the carriage. "What you call Billy, eh?"

"You've got it," he replied in resignation.

"Hill--that means a mountain," she commented. "A mountain of good luck for me--h'm? And that B--what is that for?"

"My middle name," said Billy patiently, as they reached the door the Arab doorman was holding open for them.

Absently she laughed. Her dark eyes were sparkling at the vision of the safe and s.h.i.+ning hotel, the dear familiar luxury, the sounds and sights of her lost Continental life. A few late arrivals from some dance gave a touch of animation to the wide rooms, and Fritzi's eyes clung delightedly to the group.

"G.o.d, how happy I am!" she sighed.

Billy was busy avoiding the clerk's knowing scrutiny. It was the same clerk he had coerced with real cigars to enlighten him concerning Arlee Beecher, and he felt that that clerk was thinking things about him now, mistaken and misguided things, about his predilections for the ladies. Philosophically he wondered where they had better try after this.

But he underestimated the battery of Fritzi's charms, or else the serene a.s.surance of her manner.

"My letters--letters for Baroff," she demanded of the clerk. "None yet. Then my room, please.... But I sent a wire from Alexandria.

That stupid maid," she turned to explain to Billy, her air the last stand of outraged patience. "She is at the train looking for that luggage she lost," she added to the clerk, and thereupon she proceeded to arrange for the arrival of the fict.i.tious maid whom Billy heard himself agreeing to go back and fetch if she did not turn up soon, and to engage a room for herself--a much nicer room than Billy himself was occupying--then handed over Billy's sovereigns and turned happily away jingling the huge key of her room.

"It is a miracle!" she cried again, exultant triumph in every pretty line of her. "My heart dances, my blood is singing--Oh, if I were on the stage now, the music cras.h.i.+ng, the lights upon me, the house packed! I would enchant them! I would dance myself mad.... Ah, what you say now--shall we have a little bottle of champagne to drink to our better acquaintance, Mr. Billy?"

"Not this evening," said the unemotional young man. "You are going to sit down at this desk and draw me those plans of the palace."

Petulantly she shrugged at her rescuer. "How stupid--to-morrow you may not have that chance for the champagne," she observed. "You think of nothing but to go back and get killed, then? And I must help you? Very well. Here, I will draw it for you and I will tell you all I know."

She sat down at a desk and began working out the diagrams, and at last she handed the paper to Billy, who sat beside her, and pointed out the rooms and scribbled the words on them for his aid.

"It is very simple," she said. "That first square is for the court, and the next square is for the garden. The hall of banquets comes so, between them, and the hall is two stories tall, and across the top of that, from the _selamlik_ to the harem, runs that little secret pa.s.sage. And at the end of it, here, is the little panel into the rose room where she is, and beside the panel outside in the pa.s.sage are the little steps that go up to that tower room, where they put me on the top. And from that top room I broke out a locked door on the roof--that is how I got away. I climbed down at the end of the harem from one roof to another where it is unfinished.... The rose room is here on the garden, but the windows have bars, and those bars are too strong for breaking. I have tried it! There is no way out but the secret way by that pa.s.sage into the men's wing, or the other way through the door into the long hall and down the little stairs into the anteroom below. How Seniha hated me when I made laughter and noise and talk going up and down those stairs to my motor car!"

She laughed impishly, pointing out Seniha's rooms, facing on the street, and contributing several bizarre anecdotes of the palace life. But Billy was not to be diverted, and went over the plans again and again, before the diminished number of lights and the hoverings of the attendant Arabs recalled the lateness of the hour to his absorption.

But late as they were they were not the only occupants of the lift.

Returning from a masquerade, a domino over his arm, stood Falconer.

Civilly enough he returned Billy's greeting, with no apparent awareness of the little lady in pongee, but Billy was conscious that her flaunting caliber had been promptly registered. And to his annoyance the actress raised big eyes of reproach to him.

"No champagne for me, after all, Mr. Billy!" she sighed. "You are not very good for a celebration--h'm?... Well, then--good night."

Her parting smile as she left the car adroitly included the tall aristocratic young Englishman with the little moustache.

Sharply Billy turned to him. "Come up to my room, please. I have something to say to you."

In silence Falconer followed. Billy flung shut the door, drew a long breath, and turned to him.

"Do you know where I got that girl?" he demanded.

It took several seconds of Falconer's level-lidded look of distaste to bring home the realization.

"Oh, see here," he protested, "wait till you understand this thing.... I pulled that girl over Kerissen's back wall at ten o'clock to-night. I thought she was Miss Beecher, but a mistake had been made and the wrong girl arrived. But the point is this--_Arlee Beecher is in that palace_. This girl saw her and talked with her last night. Now we've got to get her out. It's a two-man job," said Billy, "or you'd better believe I'd never have come to you again."

He had given it like a punch, and it knocked the breath out of Falconer for one floored instant. But he was no open-mouthed believer. The thing was more unthinkable to him than to Billy's romantic and adventurous mind, and the very notion was so revolting that he fought it stoutly.

From beginning to end Billy hammered over the story as he knew it, explaining, arguing, debating, and then he drew out the plans of the palace and flung them on the table by Falconer while he continued his excited tramping up and down the room.

Falconer studied the plans, worried his moustache, stared at Billy's tense and resolute face, and took up the plans again, his own chin stubborn.

"Granted there's a girl--you can't be sure it's Miss Beecher," he maintained doggedly. "This Baroff girl had no idea of her name. Now Miss Beecher would have told her name, the very first thing, it appears to me, and the names of her friends in Cairo, asking for the Baroff's offices in getting a letter to me--us."

"She may have been too hurried to get to it. She had so many questions to ask. And she probably expected to see the girl again the next day or night."

"Possibly," said Falconer without conviction.

"But where, then, is Miss Beecher?"

"We may hear from her to-morrow morning."

"We won't," said Billy.

Falconer was silent.

"Good Lord!" the American burst out, "there can't be two girls in Cairo with blue eyes and fair hair whom Kerissen could have lured there last Wednesday! There can't be two girls with chaperons departing up the Nile! Why--why--the whole thing's as clear to me--as--as a house afire!"

"I don't share your conviction."

"Very well, then, if you don't think it is Miss Beecher, you don't have to go into this thing. If you can feel satisfied to lay the matter before the amba.s.sador and let that unknown girl wait for the arm of the law to reach her, you are at perfect liberty, of course, to do so." Billy was growing colder and colder in tone as he grew hotter and hotter in his anger.

Falconer said nothing. He was a very plucky young man, but he had no liking at all for strange and unlawful escapades. He didn't particularly mind risking his neck, but he liked to do it in accredited ways, in polo, for instance, or climbing Swiss peaks, or swimming dangerous currents.... But he was young--and he had red hair. And he remembered Arlee Beecher. These three days had not been happy ones for him, even sustained as he was by righteous indignation. And if there was any chance that this prisoned girl was Arlee, as this infatuated American was so furiously sure--He reflected that Billy was doing the sporting thing in giving him the chance of it.

"I'll join you," he said shortly. "I can't let it go, you know, if there's a chance of its being Miss Beecher."

"Good!" said Billy, holding out his hand and the two young men clasped silently, eyeing each other with a certain mutual respect though with no great increase of liking.

"Now, this is my idea," Billy went on, and proceeded to develop it, while Falconer carefully studied the plans and made a shrewd suggestion here and there.

It was late in the morning when they parted.

"You must muzzle that Baroff girl," was Falconer's parting caution.

"We must keep this thing deuced quiet, you know."

"Of course. He shan't get wind of it ahead."

"Not only that. We mustn't have talk afterwards. It would kill the girl, you know."

Billy nodded. "She would hate it, I expect."