"Right!"
"Wrong, monsieur."
"I mean that it is good for me that you are wicked."
"Monsieur is very good."
"Yes; but I wish to be--that is, to see the other thing. Can you undertake to show me everything shocking in Algiers?"
"But certainly, monsieur. For a consideration."
"Name your price."
"Two hundred pounds, monsieur."
Mr. Greyne started. It seemed a high figure.
"Monsieur thought it would be more? I make a special price, because I have taken a fancy to monsieur. I remove fifty pounds. Monsieur, of course, will pay all expenses."
"Of course, of course."
It was no time to draw back.
"How long will it take?"
"To see all the shocking--?"
"Precisely."
"There is a good deal. A fortnight, three weeks. It depends on monsieur.
If he is strong, and can do without sleep----"
"We shall have to be up at night?"
"Naturally."
"I shall go to bed during the day, and get through it in a fortnight."
"Perfectly."
"Be at the Grand Hotel to-night at ten o"clock precisely."
"At ten o"clock I will be there. Monsieur will pay a little in advance?"
"Here are twenty pounds," cried Mr. Greyne recklessly.
The audacious-looking young man took the notes with decision, made a graceful salute, and disappeared in the direction of the quay, while Mr.
Greyne walked to his hotel, flushed with excitement, and feeling like the most desperate criminal in Africa. If the militia could see him now!
At dinner he drank a bottle of champagne, and afterwards smoked a strong cigar over his coffee and liqueur. As he was finishing these frantic enjoyments the head waiter--a personage bearing a strong resemblance to an enlarged edition of Napoleon the First--approached him rather furtively, and, bending down, whispered in his ear:
"A gentleman has called to take monsieur to the Kasbah."
Mr. Greyne started, and flushed a guilty red.
"I will come in a moment," he answered, trying to a.s.sume a nonchalant voice, such as that in which a hardened major of dragoons announces that in his time he was a devil of a fellow.
The head waiter retired, looking painfully intelligent, and Mr. Greyne sprang upstairs, seized a Merrin"s exercise-book and a lead pencil, put on a dark overcoat, popped one of the Springfield revolvers into the pocket of it, and hastened down into the hall of the hotel, where the audacious-looking young man was standing, surrounded by saucy cha.s.seurs in gay liveries and peaked caps, by Algerian waiters, and by German-Swiss porters, all of whom were smiling and looking choke-full of sympathetic comprehension.
"Ha!" said Mr. Greyne, still in the major"s, voice. "There you are!"
"Behold me, monsieur."
"That"s good."
"Wicked, monsieur."
"Well, let"s be off to the mosque."
One of the cha.s.seurs--a child of eight who was thankful that he knew no better--burst into a piping laugh. The waiters turned hastily away, and the German-Swiss porters retreated to the bureau with some activity.
"To the mosque--precisely, monsieur," returned the guide, with complete self-possession.
They stepped out at once upon the pavement, where a carriage was in waiting.
"Where are we going?" inquired Mr. Greyne in an anxious voice.
"We are going to the heights to see the Ouled," replied the guide. "_En avant!_"
He bounded in beside Mr. Greyne, the coachman cracked his whip, the horses trotted. They were off upon their terrible pilgrimage.
V
On the following afternoon, at a quarter to three, when Mr. Greyne came down to breakfast, he found, lying beside the boiled eggs, a note directed to him in a feminine handwriting. He tote it open with trembling fingers, and read as follows:--
1 Rue du Pet.i.t Neore.
Dear Monsieur,--I am here. Poor mamma is in the hospital. I am allowed to see her twice a day. At all other times I remain alone, praying and weeping. I trust that monsieur has pa.s.sed a good night. For me, I was sleepless, thinking of mamma. I go now to church.
Adele Verbena.
He laid this missive down, and sighed deeply. How strangely innocent it was, how simple, how sincere! There were white souls in Algiers--yes, even in Algiers. Strange that he should know one! Strange that he, who had filled a Merrin"s exercise-book with tiny writing, and had even overflowed on to the cover after "crossing" many pages, should receive the child-like confidences of one! "I go now to the church." Tears came into his eyes as he laid the letter down beside a pile of b.u.t.tered toast over which the burning afternoon sun of Africa was shining.
"Monsieur will take milk and sugar?"