It Happened in Egypt Part 6

"It is possible." "Well, I'd be willing to give you a big salary for showing us about Cairo, and perhaps going up the Nile."

"You do not know who I am, Mademoiselle. Ask your friend Lord Ernest Borrow. Perhaps he may remember something about my circ.u.mstances now he has recalled my face."

I was honestly not sure whether this were further deviltry, or an appeal for help. In any case, I thought it time for the scene to end.

"I told you," I said to Monny in English, "that he was a man of importance, not at all the sort of person you could expect to engage for a guide. You must see now that he's a gentleman. And a--a--an Egyptian gentleman is just the same as any other."

"Surely not quite!" she answered in the same language, and I realized my foolish mistake in using it, as if I meant her to understand that Antoun Effendi knew it too little to catch our secrets.

"An Egyptian man can't have the same feelings as a European? Why, for hundreds and hundreds of years they've been an enslaved race, like our black people at home. We'd never think of calling even the fairest quadroon man a gentleman, though he might be wonderfully good looking and nice mannered."

Literally, I was frightened. Anthony Fenton is fiercely devoted to the memory of the beautiful princess-mother, for love of whom his father's career was ruined. _Her_ mother was a Sicilian woman, and her father was half Greek, so there is little enough Egyptian blood, after all, in the veins of General Fenton's son. He is proud of what there is--proud, because of his mother's fatal charm, and the romance of her story (it was on the eve of her wedding with a cousin of the Sultan that the famous soldier Charles Fenton ran away with Princess Lalla and married her in Sicily): but he is sensitive, too, because, great name as Charles Fenton had made in Egypt, he was asked to resign his commission on account of the escapade. Anthony, sent to England to a public school, had fought bigger boys than himself, who, in a certain tone, had sneeringly called him "Egyptian." I imagined now that through the dark stain on his face I could see him turn pale with rage. He thought, perhaps, that the American beauty was revenging herself for his impertinence, and maybe he was right, but that did not excuse her.

"Be careful, Miss Gilder!" I warned the girl. "This man understands English better than you think. He comes of a princely family and he's got only to put out his hand to claim a fortune--"

"You seem to remember all about me now, Lord Ernest," broke in Fenton, looking dangerous.

"Yes," I said. "It comes back to me. You must forgive Miss Gilder."

"There is nothing to forgive," he caught me up. "I am not a dragoman, to be sure, but I'm enough of an Egyptian to have a price for anything I do. I may put myself at this lady's service if she will pay my price, though I'm not a servant and can't accept wages, even for the sake of pursuing my excavations!"

He continued to speak in French, lest my companions' suspicions should be further roused by the English of an Englishman; and Monny, pale after her blush, answered in neat, schoolgirl French, with a pretty American, accent. "What's the price you wish to name?" she inquired, looking a little afraid of him and ashamed of herself, now that talk of princes and fortunes was bandied about. "Of course," she went on, when he did not answer at once, "if I'd known--all this, I shouldn't have asked you to be a dragoman. At least, perhaps I shouldn't. Anyhow, I shouldn't have made a bet--"

"A bet that I would have a 'price,' Mademoiselle? Then you may win your bet, for I've just told you; I have a price. But I think it unlikely you would be willing to pay it."

"Good heavens, is he going to try and marry the girl?" I asked myself.

It would be the last thing to expect of Anthony Fenton. However, he had already done the last but one; the thing I had bet his green turban he would not do. After all, he was a man, and a reckless man, as he had proved on more than one wild occasion. He was in a strange mood, capable of anything; and the Gilded Rose could never have been prettier in her life than at this minute. She had made him furious, and I had imagined that his acceptance of her overtures was the beginning of some scheme of punishment. Now I was almost sure I had been right, yet I could not guess what he would be at. Neither could Monny. But here was the dangerously picturesque Arab who "must be a prince or something,"

as Cleopatra had expressed it. And he was even more dangerous than picturesque.

"You--you said you wouldn't take wages," she stammered (I enjoyed hearing the self-willed young person stammer): "so I can't understand what you mean. But even though you are all those things Lord Ernest says you are, your price can't be so terribly high as to be beyond my power to pay--if I choose to pay."

"First, Mademoiselle, I must decide whether I choose to be paid."

"Oh!" Monny exclaimed, taken aback. "I thought it was a question of price."

"Not only that. 'I _may_ put myself at the lady's service--for a price,' was what I said. I didn't say, 'I will.' I shall not be able to tell you until to-night." The patronizing tone in which Anthony spoke this sentence was worth to me everything I had gone through in the last half hour.

"But--I want to settle things this morning or--not at all," said Monny, reverting to type: that of the spoiled child.

"I am sorry," replied the man of the green turban. "In that case, it must be not at all." And he made as if to go.

The Gilded Girl could not bear this. I and the others would see that she was fallible; that there were things she wanted which she could not get. "Why can't you tell me now what your price is?" she persisted.

"Because, Mademoiselle, I may not need to tell you ever. It depends partly on another than myself." He threw a quick glance at me. "I expect to meet that other at Abdullahi's Cafe in an hour from now at latest. Everything will depend on the interview. In any case, I will let you know to-night what I can do."

"I may not be in," said Monny. "But if I'm out, you can leave a note."

"If I must refuse to serve you, yes, I can leave a note. If I am to accept, I must see you in person. Should you be out, I'll take it for granted that you have changed your mind and do not want"--he smiled faintly for the first time--"so expensive a guide."

Monny hesitated. "I am not stingy. I'll stay at home this evening," she volunteered at last.

"Bravo Petruchio!" I said under my breath. But if Biddy's plot were to succeed, it was _my_ business to play the part of Petruchio to this Katherine. Let the masquerading prince find a Desdemona who would suit his Oth.e.l.lo!

CHAPTER V

THE CAFe OF ABDULLAH

"Well--you got away from them all right?" began the man with the green turban when, according to his roundabout instructions, I met him an hour later at the cafe he had named, one of the princ.i.p.al resorts of Cairo, where Europeans can consort with natives without attracting remark.

"The real dragoman came and took them off my hands--at least the realer one than you--a dreadful creature with a game eye, who murdered your messenger last night, and gave me your letter and induced the ladies to engage him on the strength of it. No wonder they want a 'looker' to take the taste of him out of their mouths. And you certainly are a 'looker' in that get-up. Now kindly tell me all about it, and everything else."

"That's what I'm here for," said Anthony, running a match-box to earth in some mysterious Arab pocket. "But hold on, Duffer. Something you said just then may be important. Is it true that my messenger didn't give you the letter?"

"If you'd hung about Shepheard's Hotel ten minutes longer, you'd have seen the fellow who did give it. Bedr el Gemaly he calls himself --Armenian Mussulman, a sickening combination, and an awful brute to look at--said your messenger was taken suddenly ill; pretends to be a dragoman."

"What is he like?"

"Rather like a partially decayed but decently dressed goat."

"Don't rot. This may be serious."

I described Bedr el Gemaly as best I could, feature by feature. When I had polished them off, Anthony shook his green-turbaned head. "No portrait of him in my rogues' gallery. Just now, I'm sensitive about spies--over-sensitive rather. Of course, you've spotted my game?"

"I confess I was conceited enough to think you'd given yourself all this trouble with the costumier in order to take a rise out of me. But when you speak of spies, I begin to put two and two together--your business in Cairo--the powers that be, keeping you from me last night, etc. I suppose it's an official job, this fancy dress affair?"

"Yes. In my own capacity, I'm not in Cairo. I turned up day before yesterday, jolly glad to get back from Adrianople--though it was good fun there, I can tell you, for a while; and I looked forward to wallowing no end in the alleged delights of civilization. I reported myself, and all seemed well. I took a room at Shepheard's where you and I had arranged to meet, and when I'd scrubbed, I strolled over to the Turf Club to see what the gay world would have to say to a fellow in disgrace."

"Only silly a.s.ses swallowed that newspaper spoof! Every one in London who knows anything about you was betting his boots that the story had been spread on purpose to save our face with Turkey." I couldn't resist interrupting his narrative to this extent. But Anthony merely smiled, and watched a long-lived smokering settle like a halo over the head of an Arab at the nearest table. He was not giving away official secrets, but I was sure and always had been sure that he was a martyr, not a rebel, in the matter of the Balkan incident, just closed. What the public were led to suppose was this: that Captain Fenton had asked for two months' leave from regimental duty at Khartum, in order to spend the time with a relative who was seriously ill in Constantinople. That instead of remaining at his relative's bedside, he had used his leave for a dash to the Balkans. That this indiscretion might have been kept a secret had he not capped it with another: a flight with a Greek officer in an army aeroplane which had ended by crashing down in the midst of a Turkish encampment.

What I and friends who knew him best supposed, was that the "leave" had been a pretext--that Fenton had been sent on a secret mission of some sort--and that he was bound to take the blame if anything went wrong.

Aeroplanes have the habits of other fierce, untamed animals: they won't always obey their trainers. Thus Anthony and his plan had both been upset. (Or had it really been premeditated that he should fall into that camp?) The remainder of his "leave" was cancelled, in punishment, and he had been "recalled" to Egypt, to be scolded in Cairo before proceeding to Khartum.

"Queer how many silly a.s.ses one knows!" Anthony said. "Still, considering what a mess I seem to have made of things, fellows were jolly kind, at the Turf Club. n.o.body cut me, and only a few let me alone. Maybe there'd have been still fewer if there hadn't been a hero present who claimed attention: an American chap, Jack Dennis, who knows Miss Gilder and was telling the good news that she was on her way to Egypt. He called her the Gilded Rose and said it was going to be a good flower season in Cairo and up the Nile. All the men with one exception seemed to have heard a lot about her and to find her an interesting subject, and to want Dennis to introduce them."

"I can guess the 'one exception'!" said I.

"Can you? Well, I don't read newspaper gossip about heiresses. Thank heaven, I've something better to do with my time. But the others wanted to meet her, or pretended to, perhaps to chaff Dennis, rather a c.o.c.ky youth, though I oughtn't to say so, as he was nice to me, according to his lights. He got Sam Blake to introduce us, when he happened to hear my name, and went out of his way to pay me compliments, which I daresay he thought I'd like. When there was a lull in the discussion of what could be done to make Miss Gilder enjoy herself in Egypt--chaps suggesting trips in their motor cars or on their camels and a lot of rot, Dennis remarked that I was the only man who hadn't chipped into the conversation. And hadn't I any ideas for entertaining the Golden Girl? Naturally I said that I didn't know who she was and had never heard of her, and even if I had, entertaining girls wasn't in my line.

They all roared, and Dennis wouldn't believe at first that I didn't know of such an important person's existence; but the other men rotted a bit, and described me to him according to their notions of me. So he let me alone on the subject; and having plenty of other things to think of, I forgot all about it till the lady in question introduced herself this morning. Then--well, it struck me as rather amusing at first that I, the only one in the crowd who hadn't made plans to get at her, should have her trying to get at me. That was partly why I came up on the terrace when she beckoned."

"Partly? For purely intellectual reasons I'm curious to know the rest.

I suppose it had nothing to do with her looks?"

"As it happened, my cynical friend, it hadn't. I've got eyes in my head and I could see she was pretty, very pretty, though not my ideal type at all. That little sprite of a woman in fawn colour, the one with green eyes and a lot of black lashes, is more what I'd fall in love with if I were frivolous. But apart from the funny side of my meeting with Miss Golder, or Gilder, it popped into my head that I might make her a victim in a certain cause. Don't ask me to explain yet, because there are a lot of things that have got to be explained first, or you couldn't understand. You were right, of course, when you thought I'd stationed myself in front of Shepheard's to take a rise out of you. I gave up my room there yesterday, for reasons I'll tell you. But I knew you'd be in the hotel, and that you'd be bound to show yourself on the terrace, in order to go out. I wanted to see if you'd recognize me, and to have a little fun with you if you didn't. By the way, I'm not pleased that you did. It's a poor compliment to my make-up, which I may tell you has been warmly praised in high quarters!" "Well, you see," I apologized, "I knew you were a nailer at that sort of thing, or you would never have got to Mecca, and earned your green turban. I knew you'd been pretty often called upon to disguise yourself and go about among the natives for one thing or another. And besides, we were chums before you had the shadow of a moustache, so I have an advantage over the other Sherlock Holmeses! But even as it was, I couldn't be sure at first. You must have got some fun out of my expression."

"I did. I took revenge on you for recognizing me by tormenting you as far as I dared. Dear old boy, I knew you'd see me through to the end, bitter or sweet!"