The Palace of Darkened Windows | Page 4

for he felt within himself the true equipment for that delicate mission. He fairly panted to be at it.
Fate was amiable. The hotel clerk, coerced with a couple of gold-banded ones with the real fragrance, permitted Billy to learn that the blue-eyed one's name was Beecher, Arlee Beecher, and that she was in the company of two ladies entitled Mrs. and Miss Eversham. The Miss Eversham was quite old enough to be entitled otherwise. They were occupied, the clerk reported, with nerves and dissatisfaction. Miss Beecher appeared occupied in part--with a correspondence that would swamp a foreign office.
* * * * *
Now it is always a question whether being at the same hotel does or does not constitute an introduction. Sometimes it does; sometimes it does not. When the hotel is a small and inexpensive arrangement in Switzerland, where the advertised view of the Alpengl��hen is obtained by placing the chairs in a sociable circle on the sidewalk, then usually it does. When the hotel is a large and expensive affair in gayest Cairo, where the sunny and shady side rub elbows, and gamesters and d��butantes and touts and school teachers and vivid ladies of conspicuous pasts and stout gentlemen of exhilarated presents abound, in fact where innocent sightseers and initiated traffickers in human frailties are often indistinguishable, then decidedly it does not.
But fate, still smiling, dropped a silver shawl in Billy's path as he was trailing his prey through the lounge after dinner. The shawl belonged, most palpably, to a German lady three feet ahead of him, but gripping it triumphantly, he bounded over the six feet which separated him from the Eversham-Beecher triangle and with marvelous self-restraint he touched Miss Eversham on the arm.
"You dropped this?" he inquired.
Miss Eversham looked surprisedly at Billy and uncertainly at the shawl, which she mechanically accepted. "Why I--I didn't remember having it with me," she hesitated.
"I noticed you were wearing one other evenings," said Billy, the Artful, "so I thought----"
"You know whether this is yours or not, don't you, Clara?" interposed the mother.
"They all look alike," murmured Clara Eversham, eying helplessly the silver border.
Billy permitted himself to look at Miss Beecher. That young person was looking at him and there was a disconcerting gaiety in her expression, but at sight of him she turned her head, faintly coloring. He judged she recalled his unmannerly eavesdropping that afternoon.
"Pardon--excuse me--but that is to me belonging," panted an agitated but firm voice behind them, and two stout and beringed hands seized upon the glittering shawl in Miss Eversham's lax grasp. "It but just now off me falls," and the German lady looked belligerent accusation upon the defrauding Billy.
There was a round of apologetic murmurs, unacknowledged by the recipient, who plunged away with her shawl, as if fearing further designs upon it. Billy laughed down at the Evershams.
"I feel like a porch climber making off with her belongings. But I had seen you with----"
"I do think I had mine this evening, after all," murmured Clara, with a questioning glance after the departing one.
"An uncultured person!" stated Mrs. Eversham.
Miss Beecher said nothing at all. Her faint smile was mockingly derisive.
"Anyway you must let me get you some coffee," Billy most inconsequentially suggested, beckoning to the red-girdled Mohammed with his laden tray, and because he was young and nice looking and evidently a gentleman from their part of the world and his evening clothes fitted perfectly and had just the right amount of braid, Mrs. Eversham made no objection to the circle of chairs he hastily collected about a taborette, and let him hand them their coffee and send Mohammed for the cream which Miss Eversham declared was indispensable for her health.
"If I take it clear I find it keeps me awake," she confided, and Billy deplored that startling and lamentable circumstance, and passed Mrs. Eversham the sugar and wondered if they could be the Philadelphia Evershams of whom he had heard his mother speak, and regretted that they were not, for then they would know who he was--William B. Hill of Alatoona, New York. He found it rather stupid traveling alone. Of course one met many Americans, but----
Mrs. Eversham took up that "but" most eagerly, and recounted multiple and deplorable instances of nasal countrywomen doing the East and monopolizing the window seats in compartments, and Miss Eversham supplied details and corrections.
Still Miss Beecher said nothing. She had a dreamy air of not belonging to the conversationalists. But from an inscrutable something in her appearance, Billy judged she was not unentertained by his sufferings.
At the first pause he addressed her directly. "And how do you like Cairo?" was his simple question. That ought, he reflected, to be an entering wedge.
The young lady did not trouble to raise her eyes. "Oh, very much," said she negligently, sipping her coffee.
"Oh,