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Page 66
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 ambassador 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."
"Hate it? My word, it would finish her--a tale of that kind going
the rounds.... She could never live it down."
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