"Safe, yes," Monny answered. "And Mabel—why don't you ask about her? Oh, Lord Ernest, we've done it—we've done it—thanks to Antoun Effendi! We should have failed at the last if it hadn't been for him. Just look over there, at the Bronsons, and see if you can guess who it is they're talking to?"
I looked and saw tall, thin Mr. Bronson, and short, plump Mrs. Bronson trying to form a hollow square around a little figure in a long gray coat of Biddy's, and a hood with a veil I remembered her wearing the day we motored to Heliopolis. It seemed about a hundred years ago. I had conducted so much and so violently since; but I was not too old to remember Biddy's hood. What if Neill Sheridan, poking about alone with a candle, could see through that veil?
"Triumph!" I exclaimed. "You're heroines!" (I didn't know then how true were my own words.) "Was it a great adventure?"
"Was it, Biddy?" the girl asked, half shyly of her friend.
"So great that I can't talk about it," Brigit answered, and her eyes implored mine not to ask questions. Also they said that she had things to tell me—not now but by and by. Things for me alone. Biddy's eyes could be wonderful.
"Where's Antoun Effendi?" Monny broke in, when I had taken Brigit's hint, and was beginning to say that we must go and speak to the Bronsons.
"He hasn't come yet," I answered; and then her eyes, too, began to implore.
"Not come yet? But—it's a long time. We found Mr. and Mrs. Bronson outside, hoping for us to arrive, and we talked to them and introduced Mabel, and explained things. They would have liked to go and take her away quickly, but Biddy and I begged them not to. We said it would be better to wait for the rest, and all the crowd to be together in case of—trouble. Oh, we discussed everything, for ages—minutes and minutes. I do think Antoun Effendi ought to be here, unless—"
I caught her up quickly. "Unless?"
"Well, you see, we left him inside Rechid's gate, where he'd just knocked down a big negro, and was keeping back Rechid and lots of other men—anyhow three—with a pistol—not the one he lent me. He told us to go, so we went."