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When the train started out on the High Bridge across the Nile to the eastern bank, he came out in the corridor to look out the wide glass windows there, and found Arlee beside him. "How do you do?" she said brightly. "How nice to meet accidentally like this you see, I'm rehearsing my story," she added under her breath. "Let's see if you have it straight," he told her.
Eagerly Arlee peered out into the darkness beyond. "Where does it go?" she repeated. "It runs above the hall of banquets and into the selamlik," whispered the Viennese. "It opens into Hamdi's rooms, he says, and I know that a servant sleeps always at his door and another is at the foot of the stairs. So it would be madness to try that way." But Arlee stared thoughtfully into the secret place.
I thought she was Miss Beecher, but a mistake had been made and the wrong girl arrived. But the point is this Arlee Beecher is in that palace. This girl saw her and talked with her last night. Now we've got to get her out. It's a two-man job," said Billy, "or you'd better believe I'd never have come to you again."
His fear was that one of them might steal alongside the cave and leap unexpectedly into its very mouth upon him, so with taut nerves he crouched expectant. Behind him Arlee gave a sudden shriek. He whirled. "I'll fire!" he warned, staring into the dark, but his eyes, dazed with the sun, discerned nothing, and in utter ignorance he faced the black possibilities.
But sometimes the baker sends a little boy, and if you had money to give she might get a note to him to carry though, maybe, she burns the note and keeps the money," the Viennese ended pessimistically. "But I must get help at once," Arlee iterated passionately. Before " "Before?" the other repeated curiously, "He makes love to you h'm?" "He is beginning." "Only beginning?" "Only beginning."
"I should not have gone," acknowledged Arlee, "but, as I said, I heard voices from the ante-room and thought I would like to see her.... That pretty little maid she gave me does not speak any English, so I cannot send any messages." "But you can write them." "My French spelling is worse than my pronunciation!" She laughed amusedly.
Then he bowed very formally in his best military fashion, straight-backed from the waist, heels stiffly together. "I welcome you," he said. "My sister is rejoiced.... This stair if you please." He waved to a stairway on the left, a small, steep affair, which Arlee ascended slowly, a sense of strangeness mounting with her, in spite of her confident bearing.
I shall tell him that I did tell people at the hotel that he will be discovered. I will make him afraid!" "You cannot. He watches what happens on the outside he knows." After a pause, "Oh, why did I come!" said Arlee in choking bitterness.
They considered it wiser to come from two directions, for if one were discovered and the alarm raised, the other had still a chance of getting off with Arlee, and if one were trying to escape, the other could cover his flight.
All night long they had steamed, a search-light on the bow, and Arlee had lain in the little stateroom trying to sleep, but continually aware of the breathing of the old woman huddled outside against her door, of the soft thudding of bare feet about the deck, of the pulse of the engine, beating, beating steadily, and of quick, muffled commands, of reversals, grinding of chains as some treacherous shallow appeared ahead, then of the onward drive and the steady rhythmic progress again.
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