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Page 89
He looked suddenly embarrassed, but the darkness hid it from her. He
became oddly intent on brushing his clothes. "Oh, I guessed," he
said in a casual tone.
"You guessed? Don't they know? What did they think? Oh, where did
everyone think I was?"
He told her, dwelling upon the misleading details; the hasty message
of farewell from the station, the directions about luggage, the
money to pay the hotel bill. "You see, his wits and luck were just
playing together," he said.
"Then the Evershams _are_ up the Nile?"
"Of course. They never dreamed----"
"They wouldn't." Arlee was silent. She wondered confusedly--she
wanted to ask a question--she wanted to ask two questions.
"But--but--no one else----?" she stammered.
There was a particularly large lump of sand in Billy B. Hill's
throat just then; he cleared it heavily. "Oh, yes, some one else
guessed, too," he said then. "That English friend of yours, Robert
Falconer, he and I had a regular old shooting party in the palace
last Sunday evening. If you'd been there then he would certainly
have had you out."
"So he knows." She said it a little faintly, Billy thought, as if
she was disappointed and troubled. She would know, of course, by
intuition, how the Englishman would think about a scrape of that
sort.
"But he doesn't know now," he said eagerly. "He is sure you are all
right in Alexandria, because the Evershams received another fake
telegram from you from Alexandria. The Captain was stalling them
along, apparently, keeping everything under cover as long as
possible. And when Falconer heard about that, his suspicions were
over. He thought we'd made fools of ourselves in going to the
palace."
She was silent. Looking at her, after a while, Billy saw her staring
out obliviously into the darkness; her hair was hanging all about
her.
His glance seemed to recall her thoughts. She started and then
brushed back her hair; the sand fell from it and she took hold of
one soft strand. "Look out, I'm going to shake this!" she warned,
and he half shut his eyes and underneath the lids he saw her shaking
her head as vigorously as a little terrier after a bath.
"Isn't it awful?" she appealed.
"I could scratch a match on my face," he confirmed.
"But tell me," she began again, "how did you know I was in that
palace? And I must tell you how I happened to go and how I was kept
there."
"You were told there was a quarantine, weren't you?" Billy supplied,
as she hesitated.
Her astonishment found quick speech. "Why, how did you know _that_?"
"The Baroff told me--that Viennese girl who came into your room."
"Why, you know _everything_! How did you?"
"Oh, I carried her over a wall, thinking it was you."
"But how could you think it was _I_? And what were you doing at the
wall? I don't see how----"
"Oh, one of the palace maids gave me a message in Arabic and I
thought it was from you. You see, I suspected--I had seen you drive
off in that motor----"
"But how could the maid bring you a message? Where were you? Where
did she see you?"
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