The Messengers | Page 8

they ARE from the Zoo? Maybe they escaped from the Bronx?"
"The Bronx is too near," objected Lowell. "These birds have come a great distance. They move as though they had been flying for many days."
As though the absurdity of his own thought amused him, Mortimer laughed softly.
"I'll tell you what they DO look like," he said. "They look like that bird you see on the Nile, the sacred Ibis, they--"
Something between a gasp and a cry startled him into silence. He found his host staring wildly, his lips parted, his eyes open wide.
"Where?" demanded Ainsley. "Where did you say?" His voice was so hoarse, so strange, that they all turned and looked.
"On the Nile," repeated Mortimer. "All over Egypt. Why?"
Ainsley made no answer. Unclasping his hold, he suddenly slid down the face of the rock, and with a bump lit on his hands and knees. With one bound he had cleared a flower-bed. In two more he had mounted the steps to the terrace, and in another instant had disappeared into the house.
"What happened to him?" demanded Elsie Mortimer.
"He's gone to get a gun!" exclaimed Mortimer. "But he mustn't! How can he think of shooting them?" he cried indignantly. "I'll put a stop to that!"
In the hall he found Ainsley surrounded by a group of startled servants.
"You get that car at the door in five minutes!" he was shouting, "and YOU telephone the hotel to have my trunks out of the cellar and on board the Kron Prinz Albert by midnight. Then you telephone Hoboken that I want a cabin, and if they haven't got a cabin I want the captain's. And tell them anyway I'm coming on board to-night, and I'm going with them if I have to sleep on deck. And YOU," he cried, turning to Mortimer, "take a shotgun and guard that lake, and if anybody tries to molest those birds--shoot him! They've come from Egypt! From Polly Kirkland! She sent them! They're a sign!"
"Are you going mad?" cried Mortimer.
"No!" roared Ainsley. "I'm going to Egypt, and I'm going NOW!"
Polly Kirkland and her friends were travelling slowly up the Nile, and had reached Luxor. A few hundred yards below the village their dahabiyeh was moored to the bank, and, on the deck, Miss Kirkland was watching a scarlet sun sink behind two palm-trees. By the grace of that special Providence that cares for drunken men, citizens of the United States, and lovers, her friends were on shore, and she was alone. For this she was grateful, for her thoughts were of a melancholy and tender nature and she had no wish for any companion save one. In consequence, when a steam-launch, approaching at full speed with the rattle of a quick-firing gun, broke upon her meditations, she was distinctly annoyed.
But when, with much ringing of bells and shouting of orders, the steam-launch rammed the paint off her dahabiyeh, and a young man flung himself over the rail and ran toward her, her annoyance passed, and with a sigh she sank into his outstretched, eager arms.
Half an hour later Ainsley laughed proudly and happily.
"Well!" he exclaimed, "you can never say I kept YOU waiting. I didn't lose much time, did I? Ten minutes after I got your C. Q. D. signal I was going down the Boston Post Road at seventy miles an hour."
"My what?" said the girl.
"The sign!" explained Ainsley. "The sign you were to send me to tell me"--he bent over her hands and added gently--"that you cared for me."
"Oh, I remember," laughed Polly Kirkland. "I was to send you a sign, wasn't I? You were to 'read it in your heart'," she quoted.
"And I did," returned Ainsley complacently. "There were several false alarms, and I'd almost lost hope, but when the messengers came I knew them."
With puzzled eyes the girl frowned and raised her head.
"Messengers?" she repeated. "I sent no message. Of course," she went on, "when I said you would 'read it in your heart' I meant that if you REALLY loved me you would not wait for a sign, but you would just COME!" She sighed proudly and contentedly. "And you came. You understood that, didn't you?" she asked anxiously.
For an instant Ainsley stared blankly, and then to hide his guilty countenance drew her toward him and kissed her.
"Of course," he stammered--"of course I understood. That was why I came. I just couldn't stand it any longer."
Breathing heavily at the thought of the blunder he had so narrowly avoided, Ainsley turned his head toward the great red disk that was disappearing into the sands of the desert. He was so long silent that the girl lifted her eyes, and found that already he had forgotten her presence and, transfixed, was staring at the sky. On his face was bewilderment and wonder and a