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Page 60
"I make fine dragoman?" the Arab was saying proudly. "This is ver'
old coffee-house. Many things happen here, ver' strange----"
"Yes, but I'm sick of the doggone place," said Billy fiercely. "I
can't sit still and swallow coffee any longer. Can't we start now?"
"Too soon--too soon before the time. You say ten? Come, we go next
door. Nice place next door, perhaps--dancing, maybe."
There was noise enough next door, certainly, to promise dancing. The
strident notes of Oriental music came shrieking out the open
doorway, but as Billy stepped within and stared over the heads of
the squatting throng, he saw no sinewy dancers, but only two tiny
girls in bright colors huddled wearily against the wall. The music
which was absorbing every look came from the brazen throat of a huge
instrument in the corner.
"Lord--a phonograph!" thought the young man in disgust, resenting
this intrusion of the genius of his race into foreign fields.
The squatting men, their dark lips parted in pleased smiles, were
too intent upon the innovation to turn at his entrance, but the
little girls caught sight of him and ran forward, begging
clamorously, their bracelets clanking on their outstretched arms.
With a little silver he tried to soften the vigor of the one-eyed
man's dismissal. "This cheap place--no good dancers any more," the
Arab uttered in disgust. "New man here--no good. Maybe next door
better--eh?"
But next door was only a flight of steps and a lone little doll of a
sentinel, painted and hung like a bedizened idol. Only the dark eyes
in the tinted sockets were alive, and these turned curiously after
the strange young white man who had dropped a coin into her
outstretched hand and passed on so hurriedly.
"I don't want any more of these joints," Billy was saying vehemently
to his harassed guide. "It's dark as the Styx now--let's be on our
way."
The street they were on was narrow enough for any antiquarian, but
the one into which the Arab guide now turned was so narrow that the
jutting bays of the houses seemed pushing their faces impudently
against their neighbors. A voice in one room could have been heard
as clearly in the one over the way. It was a mean little street,
squalid and poor and pitiful, but it maintained its stripped
dignities of screened windows and isolation. It was better not to
wonder what nights were like in those women's rooms in summer heat.
The lane-like path stopped at a rickety sort of wharf, and at their
approach a black head bobbed quickly up from a waiting boat. It was
the little boy who had shadowed the Captain that day--reporting his
arrival at the Khedivial palace--and he climbed out now and sat on
the wharf, watching curiously while Billy and his guide bestowed
themselves in the long canoe, and pushed silently away.
It was an eerie backwater in which they were paddling, a sluggish
stream which moved between dark houses. Sometimes it scraped against
their sides and lapped their balconies; sometimes it was held in
check by walls and narrow terraces. For Billy the water between the
dark houses, the mirrored stars, the unexpected flare of some oil
lamp and its still reflection, the long windings and the stagnant
smells held their suggestions of Venice for his senses, and he
thought the business he was going about was very similar to the
business which had brought so many of the gentry of Venice to sudden
and undesired ends.
The flies were horribly thick here. They settled upon the faces and
arms of the paddlers, totally unapprehensive of rebuff. Billy's
flesh crawled. He finished the swarm with a ringing slap that
brought a low caution from his guide.
Now the canal was wider and shallower. The houses receded, and a
field or so appeared, and frequent walls hedged the way. Then
suddenly the houses came down again to the water, and the ruins of
old mosques and palaces lined the banks for a time; to be replaced
by walls again. The windings were interminable, and just when he was
thinking that his silent guide was as confused as he was, the man
made a sudden gesture to the right bank where a tiny strip of land
showed above the water clinging to a high brick wall, and with
careful, soundless strokes they brought the canoe up to that land.
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