"That"s why I want him," said Monny. "And if he isn"t a dragoman, he"ll jump at being one if I offer to pay him enough. He"s an Egyptian, anyhow, by his clothes, or a Bedouin or something--although he isn"t as dark as the rest of these men. I suppose he must know a little about his own city and country."
"It doesn"t follow he"d tell travellers about them for money," said I.
"He looks to me a man of good birth and distinction in old fashioned dress. Why he"s lingering on the pavement in front of this hotel I can"t explain, but I"m certain he isn"t touting. Probably he"s waiting for a friend."
"He"s the best looking Arab we"ve seen yet," remarked Mrs. East. "Like my idea of an Egyptian gentleman."
"Pooh!" said Monny. "Just test him, Lord Ernest."
"Sorry, but I can"t do it," I answered, with a firmness which ought to have been tried on her long ago. "And I wouldn"t discuss him in such a loud tone of voice. He may understand English."
"We have to yell to hear ourselves speak over all this row," Biddy apologized for her darling; but she need not have troubled herself.
Miss Gilder had been deaf to my implied reproach.
"I"m glad I"m an American girl," she said. "When I want things I want them so dreadfully I just go for them, and surprise them so much that I get them before they know where they are. Now I"m going for this dragoman."
"He"s not a drag--" I persisted, but she cut me short.
"I bet you my hat he will be one! What will you bet that he won"t, Lord Ernest?"
"I"ll bet you his green turban," said I.
"How can you get it?"
"As easily as you can get him," I retorted. "It"s a safe bet."
Monny looked excited, but firm. Luckily, as she does it so often, it"s becoming to her to look firm. (I have noticed that it"s not becoming to most girls. It squares their jaws and makes their eyes snap.) But the spoiled daughter of the dead Cannon King at her worst, merely looks pathetically earnest and Minerva-like. This, I suppose, is one of the "little ways" she has acquired, since she gave up kicking and screaming people into submission. As Biddy says, the girl can be charming not only when she wants to be, but quite often when she doesn"t.
The man with the green turban was no longer engaged in hypnotizing. He had retired within himself, and appeared oblivious to the outer world.
Yet n.o.body jostled the tall, straight figure which stood with folded arms, lightly leaning against a tree. The colour of his turban was sacred in the eyes of the crowd; and when Miss Gilder, leaning over the terrace railing beckoned him, surprise rather than jealousy showed on the faces of the unwanted dragomans. As for the wearer of the turban, he did what I expected and wished him to do: paid not the slightest attention to the gesture. Whatever the motive for his masquerade, it was not to attract anything feminine.
I smiled sardonically. "That"s a nice hat you"ve got on, Miss Gilder,"
I remarked.
"Do you collect girls" hats?" she asked sweetly. "But mine isn"t eligible yet for your collection. Let me see, what did you say he was?
Oh, a Hadji!" And she shrilled forth sweetly, her voice sounding young and clear, "Hadji! Hadji! Effendi! Venez ici, s"il vous plait. Please come here."
I could have been knocked flat by a blow of the smallest, cheapest ostrich feather in the hands of any street-merchant. For he came.
Anthony came! Not to look meekly up from the pavement below the railing, but to ascend the steps of the terrace, and advance with grave dignity toward our table. Within a yard of us he stopped, giving to me, not to Miss Gilder, the beautiful Arab salute, a touch on forehead and heart.
"You devil!" I was saying to myself. "So you walk into this trap, do you, and calmly trust me to get you out. Serve you right if I don"t move hand or foot." And I almost made up my mind that I wouldn"t. But I was interested. I wanted intensely to know what the d.i.c.kens Anthony was up to, and whether he would have been up to it if he"d known the sort of young woman he had to deal with.
"It was I who called to you, not this gentleman," said Monny, when she found that Green Turban did not look at her. "Do you speak French or English a little?"
"A little of both. But I choose French when talking to Americans,"
replied Anthony Fenton, with astounding impertinence, in the preferred language. "I do not know you, Madame. But I do know this gentleman."
Good heavens! What next? He acknowledged me! What was I to do now? What did the impudent fellow want me to do? Evidently he was trying an experiment. Anthony is great on experiments, and always has been. But this was a bomb. I thought he wanted to see if I could catch it on the fly, and drop it into water before it had time to explode.
"Why didn"t you tell us, Lord Ernest?" asked Monny, with a flash in her gray eyes. "I thought you hadn"t been in Egypt since you were a child."
"I haven"t, and I didn"t recognize him at first," I answered, trying for the coolness which Anthony dared to count upon.
"You remember me now?" he inquired politely.
"I--er--yes," I replied, also in French. "Your face is familiar, though you"ve changed, I think, since--er--since you were in England. It must have been there--yes, of course. You were on a diplomatic mission. But your name--"
"You may have known me as Ahmed Antoun," said the wretch, not dreaming of that slip he had made.
Cleopatra, who has little French, nevertheless started, and fixed upon the face under the turban a stare of feverish interest. Brigit and the un.o.btrusive lady with the slanting eyes both showed such symptoms of surprise as must too late have warned Fenton that he had missed his footing, skating on thin ice.
"Antoun!" exclaimed Mrs. East. "Why, that"s what you said you called your friend Captain Fenton."
I glanced at Anthony. His profile had no more expression than that of an Indian on an American penny, and, indeed, rather resembled it. If he were blaming me for letting anything out, I had a right to blame him for letting himself in. He was silent as well as expressionless. He left it all to me--diplomat or duffer.
""Antoun Effendi" was the nickname my friend Fenton got at school," I explained to Cleopatra, "because it sounded a bit like his own name, and because he had--er--because he had a.s.sociations with Egypt. He was proud of them and is still. But Antoun is a name often heard here. And every man who isn"t a Bey or a Prince, or a Sheikh, is an Effendi. I quite remember you now," I hurried on, turning to Anthony once more.
"You are Hadji as well as Effendi."
"I have the right to call myself so, if I choose," he admitted. "I am pleased to meet you again. I was waiting for a friend when you beckoned. If you did not recognize my face at first, may I ask what it was you wanted of me?"
There was no limit, then, to his audacity. He had not learned his lesson yet, after all, it would seem.
Monny could not bear tamely to lose her hat, though she must have felt her hatpins trembling in the balance. "I told you before," she repeated, "that it was I who beckoned you." He looked at her, without speaking; and somehow the green turban and the long straight gown, by adding to his dignity, added also to his remote air of cold politeness.
How could she go on? Had she the cheek to go on? She had; but the cheek was flushed with embarra.s.sment.
"I--er--I am anxious for a guide, some one who knows Egypt well, and several languages," she desperately blurted out, looking like a half-frightened, half-defiant child. "I thought----"
"There are plenty of dragomans, Madame," Green Turban reminded her. "I can recommend you several."
"I don"t want a regular dragoman," she said. "And I"m not "Madame." I am Miss Gilder."
"Indeed?" Chilling indifference in the tone. (Monny"s hat was practically mine. I thought I should rather value it.)
"Yes. But of course that can"t matter to you."
"No. It cannot, Mademoiselle."
"What I want to say, is this. You"re a Hadji, which means you"ve been to Mecca; Lord Ernest Borrow"s just told us. So you must be very intelligent. Are you in business?"
"I am interested in excavations."
"Oh! And are you allowed to make them yourself?"
"Not always."
I glanced at him quickly, wondering if he meant that answer more for me than for the girl. But his face told nothing.
"Would you be able to, if you were rich enough?"