The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 24

"Hate it? My word, it would finish her--a tale of that kind going the rounds.... She could never live it down."

"Live it down? It would set her up in conversation for the rest of her life!" Billy chuckled softly. "That is, if it comes out all right--and that's the only way I can imagine its coming out."

With one hand on the door Falconer paused to stare back at him. "You don't mean she'd want to _tell_ about it!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with unplumbed horror.

Billy was suddenly sobered. "Well, n.o.body but you and I and the Baroff know it now," he said, "and I think we can keep the Baroff's mouth shut.... I'll see her in the morning. You'd better get in a nap to-morrow, and I will, too, for we'll want steady nerves. Good night; I'm glad you're going with me."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm glad," said the honest Englishman, with a wry grin. "If we get our throats cut, I hope Miss Beecher will return from the desert in time for our obsequies."

"Something in that red-headed chap I like after all," soliloquized Billy B. Hill, as he turned toward his long-deferred repose. "Hanged if he hasn't grit to go into a thing on an off chance!... Now, as for me, I'm _sure_."

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 pa.s.sable, 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 surrept.i.tious 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.