TAKING CHANCES
Late as he went to sleep, Billy B. Hill was up in good season that
Sunday morning. The need for cautioning Fritzi Baroff haunted him,
and he was not satisfied until he had had breakfast with that lively
young lady and laid down the law to her upon the situation.
She was very loath not to talk about herself at first. She wanted to
tell her tale to the papers and see if one of them would be hardy
enough to publish the story of the outrageous incarceration; she
wanted to cable the Viennese theater where she had played of her
sensational detention--in short, she wanted to get all the possible
publicity out of her durance vile and to advertise her small person
from Cairo to the Continent.
But Billy was urgent. "You just bide a wee on this publicity stunt,"
he demanded. "Cable your manager and press agent all you want
to--but don't talk around the hotel here--and whatever you do and
whatever you say, keep Miss Beecher's name and mine out of it."
He was very decided about that, and because she was very grateful to
him and because she liked him and because she lacked other friends
and other pocketbooks, the little Viennese held her tongue as
directed. And she borrowed as much money as Billy would lend her,
and drove off to the small shops which were open that day, and found
a frock or two and a hat which she declared passable, and returned
transfigured to the hotel and rendered the table where she lunched
with Billy, with the air of possessing him, quite the most
conspicuous in the room. The ladies gazed past them with chill eyes;
the men stared covertly, with the surreptitious envy with which even
the most virtuous of men surveys a lucky devil. And Billy sadly
perceived that he was acquiring a reputation.
He did not blame Miss Falconer for turning haughtily aside as he and
his vivid companion went past them in the veranda. But he did think
her disdainful lack of memory a little overdone.
His cheeks were still red as he looked away from her and encountered
the direct eyes of the girl who followed her.
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Hill?" said Lady Claire, as clear as a
bell. "It's _such_ a nice day, isn't it?" she added, a little
breathlessly, as she went by.
"It's much better than it was," said Billy, and he turned back to
open the door for her.
"Claire!" said Miss Falconer from within.
"Coming, dear," said Lady Claire, and with a little smile of defiant
friendliness at the young American she was gone.
But the memory of that plucky little smile stayed right with Billy.
The girl liked him, she liked him in spite of his unknown
antecedents, his preposterous picture, his conspicuous companion.
She had a mind of her own, that tall English girl with the lovely
eyes and the proud mouth. In a warm surge of friendliness his
thoughts went out to her, and he wished vaguely that he could let
her know how fine he thought she was.
Within an hour that vague wish came true. He had packed Fritzi off,
with a newly acquired maid, for a drive up and down the safe public
streets and he had re-interviewed the one-eyed man and the native
chauffeur that the one-eyed man introduced for the evening's work,
and he was at one of the public desks in the writing room, inditing
a letter to his aunt, which, he whimsically appreciated, might be
his last mortal composition, and reflecting thankfully that it was
highly unnecessary to make a will, when Lady Claire strolled into
the room and over to a desk.
She tried a pen frowningly, and Billy jumped to offer another. "Oh,
thank you," she said. She seemed not to have seen him before.
"That was rather nice of you, you know," he said gravely.
She looked up at him.
"I'm not really a wolf," he continued, the gravity surrendering to
his likable, warm smile, "and I'm glad you recognized it."
Her reply took him unawares. "I think you're _splendid_," said Lady
Claire. "I thought so in the bazaars when you came to my help and
stood up to that _beastly_ German."
"Oh, he wasn't such a beastly German, after all," Billy deprecated.
"And here I've had a message to you from him and never remembered to
give it. The fellow called on me the next morning in gala attire and
offered every apology and satisfaction in his power--even the
satisfaction of the duel, if I desired it. I didn't. But I promised
to express his deep apologies to you. He was horribly shocked at
himself. He'd been drinking, he said, to forget a 'sadness' which
possessed him. His lady love had failed to keep her tryst and life
was very dark."
"I don't wonder at her," said Lady Claire unforgivingly. "I'm sure
he must have been horrid to her!"
"I rather think she was horrid to him," Billy reflected, "although
she was a very sprightly looking lady love. He showed me her picture
in the back of his watch.... By _George_!" he uttered violently.
"What is it?"
"Oh--an idea, that's all. Something I must really attend to before
I--this afternoon, I mean. But there's no hurry about it," he added
cheerily.
Oh, Billy, Billy! Not even with his blood hot with thoughts of the
evening's work, not even with his memory ridden with Arlee's gay
witchery, could he keep his restless young eyes from laughing down
at her. But there wasn't a notion in the back of his honest head as
to the picture he was making in Lady Claire's eyes as he leaned,
long-limbed, broad-shouldered, lazily at ease against the desk, his
gray eyes very bright between their dark lashes, his dark hair
sweeping back from his wide forehead.
"Are you sure?" she asked of him, with the smile that he drew from
her. "Is it the inspiration for another picture?"
"No, no--that was my first and my last. That was the one purple
bloom of my art. I have laid my brushes by.... But I'm keeping you
from that letter you were going to write."
"It's just a few lines for Miss Falconer," Lady Claire unnecessarily
explained. "We are going to drive out to the Gezireh Palace Hotel
for tea, and she thought her brother might like to go out with us if
he came in in time."
She did not add why Miss Falconer was unable to write her own notes,
but slanted her blue-hatted head over the desk and then hastily
blotted her brief lines and tucked the sheet into an envelope.
Hesitantly she looked up at Billy.
"Have you been out to the Gezireh Palace?" she very innocently
inquired.
"Alone," said Billy.
"It's very jolly there," said she. "It's so gay--and the music is
_quite_ good."
"H'm," meditated Billy. "The condemned man ate a hearty tea of
Orange Pekoe and cress sandwiches," he reflected silently. He also
reflected that Miss Falconer would be furious--and that invited
him--and that time was interminable and that this expedition was as
good a way of getting through the afternoon as any other. Thereupon
he turned to the English girl, with a humorous challenge in his
gaze. "I wonder if you and Miss Falconer would let this be my tea
party?" he suggested.
"Miss Falconer will be delighted," said Lady Claire mendaciously.
The traces of that delight, however, lay beneath so well schooled an
exterior that they were decidedly non-apparent. Nor did Robert
Falconer's mien reveal any hint of joy when he returned to the hotel
and found the two ladies starting with Billy. He joined them with
rather the air of a watch dog, but that air soon wore away during
the long drive under the spell of young Hill's frank friendliness
and gay good humor. For Billy was extravagantly in spirits.
Excitement stirred in him like wine; his blood was on fire with
thoughts of the evening.
"It's the fool _lark_ of the thing," he said, half apologetically,
to Falconer's wonder when the two young men were alone for a minute
on the Gezireh verandas. "Didn't you ever want to be a pirate?"
The red-headed young man nodded. "Yes, but this business doesn't
make me feel like a pirate--more like a second-story man!"
"I've left letters with Fritzi Baroff," said Hill, "and if we're not
back by morning, she's to go to the authorities with them."
"That won't do us any good," said the Englishman grimly.
But after the ladies returned it was a very merry-seeming tea party.
Even Miss Falconer unbent to the artist, as she persisted in calling
Billy, though he had dutifully enlightened her that engineering was
his true and proper life work, and art but a random diversion, and
she promised to show him the sketches which she had been making,
and piled him with questions about his mysterious America.
And Lady Claire was very prettily animated, and rallied Falconer
upon his absent-mindedness and told Billy tales of her English home
and how her father had threatened to change the name of the Hall to
_Mädchenheim_ because there were five daughters of them. "_Five_
girls near an age, Mr. Hill, and all poor as church mice!" she had
blithely asserted.
But from what Billy heard of balls and hunters and "seasons," he
gleaned that being poor as church mice, for these five titled girls,
meant merely an effort in keeping up with the things they felt
should be theirs by right divine. And as Billy listened, feeling the
force of the girl's attraction, the charm of her serene confidence
and the pleasant air of security and well-being that hedged her in,
he stole a covert glance at Falconer's unrevealing countenance and
reflected that it was rather a stormy day for that young man when he
became entangled with the fortunes of little Miss Beecher. It was
also a stormy day for himself, but he felt that storms belonged more
naturally to his adventurous lot.
* * * * *
But it was characteristic of Falconer when once committed to a plan
not to open his mind to the objections which besieged it. So that
night, at the fall of dark, as the two young men motored forth
together, he maintained a stolid resolution which refused to look
back. The approach of the danger was tuning up his nerves, and
whatever his common sense might think about it, his youth and pluck
greeted the adventure with a quickening heart and a rash warmth of
blood.
Both young men were resolute and confident. Either would have been
more than human if he had not looked a trifle askance upon the other
and wished to thunder that he had been able to go into it alone and
to have tasted the intoxication of delivering the girl single-handed
out of the den of thieves. But the success of the plan was
paramount, as Billy reminded himself.
He found himself hoping wildly that she would see him as well as
Falconer.
"She has probably forgotten all about me," he thought ruefully. "She
won't remember that dance with me, nor that chat next morning. I'm
just an Also Met. She won't even perceive me. She'll see that
sandy-haired deliverer--and she'll tell him how right he was and how
good to come after her----"
Thus jealousy darkly painted his undoing. "But, darn it, I had to
ask him!" Thus he downed his ungenerous thoughts. "It needed two men
at least--and besides, I don't want any handicap of gratitude in
this."
They left the automobile in the Mohammedan graveyard with exact and
impressive instructions. And then they stole back among the gloomy
trees and ghostly tombs to where the canal washed the foot of the
little terraces, and there the one-eyed man sat waiting in the
canoe, a figure of profound misanthropy.
Silently he lifted a stricken but set countenance, and they climbed
in and the three paddled off, approaching the back of the palace
with wary eyes, for they were afraid that a guard might now be set
upon the walls. But Billy had argued that Kerissen was unaware of
Fritzi's knowledge of Arlee's identity; in fact she had at first
supposed her a willing supplanter like herself, and so he would not
be apprehensive of any of her revelations. And he did not dream that
Fritzi's rescuers were interested in Arlee.
At the strip of path the canoe made softly to shore and the two
young men climbed out, while the Arab remained in the canoe, his
single eye peering into the darkness. This time Billy had provided
three stout, but narrow, ladders, constructed of two poles nailed
together with occasional cross pieces that gave narrow room for a
foot. He set one of these in place against the wall now, grounding
its ends deep in the soft earth, so that it would remain in
readiness for any sudden descent. Then from the top of the wall they
reconnoitered the scene before them.
It was very dark. The garden was full of blotting shadows, and the
long wing of the harem lay almost in darkness, with only a faint
beam from two adjacent windows to reveal a sign of life. Those
windows were on the third story, next the angle made by the union of
the banquet hall and the harem, and Billy's heart quickened as he
recognized the location of the rose room.
"That's it--that's her room," he whispered excitedly to Falconer.
Falconer stared and nodded. "I wish that beastly hall wasn't in the
way ahead of us. I'd like to see what lights are in the windows in
that court beyond."
"We might both go and take a look," said Billy doubtfully, "but I
guess you had better make, straight for your roofs. It wouldn't do
to have us both nabbed. Do you hear anything?"
They listened, crouching flat upon the wall, straining their eyes
toward the palace. There was a high wind blowing and above them the
leaves of the palm trees were slapping against each other, and below
the shrubs and flowers were stirring restlessly. But the noise of
the wind, they felt, was helpful to cover the sounds of their
approach.
"Why can't I make my way around on top of this wall and climb on the
roofs from the start?" Falconer questioned, and Billy answered, "I
asked her that. She said it couldn't be done. You'd have to climb
through some unsafe rubbish. The best way is down and up again in
that angle that she showed me. Shall we start?"
The same impulse made both men examine their revolvers, then drop
them in readiness into their right-hand coat pockets. They moved
along the top of the wall till they reached the angle with the wall
on their right, and then they lowered the same knotted rope which
Billy had used the night before, but now another rope added to it
made it into a rope ladder. Suspending that over the top of the wall
by iron hooks, they slipped down it, each with a pole ladder in his
arms, and with another hook of iron they drove the ends down into
the earth, so that the rope would not wave out in the wind and
either betray them or become displaced.
It was insecure enough, anyway, but they felt it ought to be left in
readiness for a flight that might have no second to waste. Now, with
eyes sharply challenging the shadows, they stole along the edge of
the palace.
Staring up at the building, Billy stopped. "Here's a place a story
and a half high--you could almost climb up by those carvings without
any ladder. And there's the next higher roof back of it--and then
you must go there to the left."
"I can make it," said Falconer, surely. "Now how much time shall I
allow you for your sawing--fifteen minutes?"
"Guess you'd better," Billy reflected, and they compared watches.
It was tremendously difficult to arrive at any sort of concerted
action on this bewildering expedition, but they were hoping to
achieve it. Their plan had the simplicity of all desperate measures.
One from below and one from above they were to make their way to
that rose room and fight the way out with the girl. 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. They had drawn straws for their positions, and Billy had
been slightly relieved that the entrance from below, which he
considered a trifle more difficult, had fallen to him. He felt
responsible, as well as he might, for Falconer's neck.
Now he steadied one narrow ladder of poles while Falconer crept up
it and then drew it up after him; and after a few moments of
waiting, crouched in the shadow, Billy saw the Englishman's figure
reappear against the sky on top of a higher roof. The route over
the old buildings had been found, so Billy turned and crept forward
along the wall, carrying the last long ladder of poles in his hand.
It was an unwieldy thing to carry and it distracted his attention
harassingly.
"My job," said he to himself, "is evidently to make a racket and
draw their fire from below while that red-headed chap carries Arlee
off from above. Well, I hope to the Lord he does. When I think of
her here----"
But it was unnerving to think of her here, so he didn't. He kept his
mind steadily on the plan. He had reached the stone steps that led
from the garden to the harem now, and laying down his pole-like
ladder he slipped up them and turned the handle.
But the door was locked. Fearful lest the grating of the knob should
have roused some watcher, he ran down the steps and hurried into the
shadow of the banquet hall, where he stood close beside a pillar
until he satisfied himself of the objects in the court beyond. He
saw an edge of light along the crack of a closed door to the left on
the ground floor of the _selamlik_, and in the higher stories above
that a couple of windows showed a pale illumination. On the right,
in the harem, only one window betrayed a ray of light. Altogether
the old pile was as gloomy and gruesome as a tomb.
Billy stared across the court to where the columned vestibule,
uniting the two Ls, indicated the door. He had been told a watchman
slept there, but he could see nothing now but vague outlines of the
arches of the vestibule. To the left was the open passage left for
the entry of the automobile and horses, but this, too, was roofed so
that a black shadow lay over it. But for that watchman Billy would
have made his way to those doors to draw back the bars in readiness,
but fearful of raising an alarm, he judged it was better to leave
escape to chance and turn his attention to his entry.
He went back now for his ladder, and on the right side of the
banquet hall, up under the arched roof, he discovered the wooden
grating where Fritzi had described it. Against this wall he placed
his ladder and climbed to the top, from which he could reach up and
clasp the spindles of the grating above him.
He drew himself swiftly up to this, and the end of his pole was
dislodged by his departure and fell to the inlaid pavement with a
bang that seemed to him to carry to the farthest echoes of the
sounding court. Instantly there was an answering clatter of steps.
Like a monkey Billy clung to the grating, thrusting his toes
desperately into the first openings they could find, hanging on with
his hands for dear life, holding himself as close up in the darkness
as he could, and nearly twisting his neck off in the effort to watch
what was going on below him.
The steps sounded nearer and nearer, and a huge Nubian in baggy
bloomers and a short jacket was outlined in the court. His bare feet
were thrust into clattering English shoes. He peered about him for a
time, with one hand pointing the muzzle of a revolver. Billy caught
the unpleasant gleam of it; then the man stepped in underneath the
arches of the hall and made a slow way across it.
Directly in his path lay that fatal pole. It lay along the shadow of
a column, but its end protruded beyond that shadow and would surely
catch his eye. Billy tried to free his right hand to get at a gun of
his own. To be caught ridiculously like this, clutching like a
monkey on a stick----!
Another man, shorter and bent, in a long robe and carrying a
lantern, now emerged from that door along whose closed edge Billy
had noticed the crack of light, and the Nubian diverged toward him.
The pole was unnoticed and the two joined forces and made a slow
circle in the garden. Billy remembered that dangling rope, and with
a thumping heart he hoped that it would hang unregarded in that
shadowed angle, overrun with vines.
Apparently it did, for he heard the footsteps passing on without a
stop as he clung there to his grating, his muscles cramped, his
sockets strained. Slowly the two recrossed the hall, talking
together in low gutturals and not apparently of unpleasant things,
for a note of laughter sounded. They lingered in parley in the
court, but by the time that he thought that he could not hang on a
minute longer and would drop like a peach from the wall, they
separated and each moved slowly away. The man with the lantern shut
the door after him and all was darkness there and the great Nubian
was blotted out beneath the arches of the vestibule.
The fear that Falconer was in the palace alone made Billy desperate.
Clinging with his feet and his left hand, he drew out a clasp knife
with a razor edge and hacked furiously at the delicate spindles and
frail carved work of the screen till he could thrust one arm through
the opening. The work was easier then, but he had to resist the
temptation to seize the brittle stuff and break it in pieces, for
fear the splintering sound would be too sharp.
Torn between caution and impatience he worked on, and as soon as the
hole was large enough he pulled himself cautiously up and dropped
over the edge into the cage-like balcony on the other side. The
panel which separated it from the rest of the old room was half
open, and he stepped through it into what appeared utter darkness.
He stood listening keenly, for he knew that he was standing below
the rose room; the very spot where he was must be almost exactly
beneath that secret passage outside the panel in the rose room's
wall. Not a sound came down to him and he dared not wait longer, but
turned to the left and passed through the arched doorway into the
next great salon.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark he saw that it was not utter
blackness, but that some wan light from the paler night without
faintly penetrated through those jealously guarded windows--windows
not so heavily screened, he had been told, as those upon the front
of the palace, for these were upon the court. He found time for a
flash of horror at this stifling barricade as he made his hurried
way through the room and stepped out into the little anteroom
beyond.
Here he paused, for he knew that to the left, ahead of him, was the
curtained opening into the long salon upon the street, and within
that, Fritzi had warned him, a eunuch sometimes slept or Seniha
occasionally came from her small salon to play on the piano there
and lingered apparently in wait. But no one seemed stirring, and
Billy stole to the door on his right, opening on the encased stairs,
and found it locked. Hurriedly he pried at it with a burglarious
tool, and then a sudden outburst sounded overhead.
There was a racket of hurrying feet and then a muffled explosion of
a shot. A hoarse voice yelled. Another shot, and then a thud of
something falling.
Desperately Billy fired his gun into the lock. The noise did not
matter now and might serve to divert the fight from Falconer.
Throwing his weight against the shattered lock, he bounded up the
narrow stairs and raced down the long hall to the door that was
brightly gilded. From beyond, but fainter now, came the sounds of
conflict. With a heart beating to suffocation he flung open the door
and rushed into that room.