"C'est vrai," I heard murmur in his chosen language, the Hadji, who had saved the situation. "C'etait une idée très bien pour un—duffer."
CHAPTER XXIV
PLAYING HEAVY FATHER TO RACHEL
Never had the Enchantress Isis looked so enchanting to my eyes as she looked that night. I felt, as the Set trooped on board, like an anxious hen-mother who, contrary to her fears, has safely returned a brood of ducklings to the home chicken-coop after a swim out to sea. I valued each duckling, even the least downy, far more than I had dreamed it would be possible. But there was one duckling valued so much more than all the rest (how much more I had realized only when, cackling on the bank, I saw it on the wave)—that knowing it was safe made me hysterical with joy. I could have kissed its napkin when it slid off its lap and I picked it up—the napkin, not the duck—at dinner. The drawback was that I had not saved it, as Anthony had saved Monny. It had no reason to be grateful to me, or care more than it had always cared, for a friend. And still another drawback presented itself when the confusion of dressing in haste and dining, as the Enchantress Isis steamed out of Luxor, gave me time to think. The duckling was not my duckling: and considering that it had calmly laid plans for me to capture an heiress, considering also that it had not yet abandoned these plans, I saw little reason to hope that, now I had come to a few —just a few—of my senses—it would ever take the idea seriously, of becoming mine.
To abandon once and forever the duckling simile, the first thing I did on board the boat, after recovering from the excitement of seeing Mabel off by train with the Bronsons, was to wonder how I could make up for all this hideous waste of time when I might have been making love to Biddy. But there was no chance to say anything personal to her that night. I had to hear—and wanted to hear—the story of all that had happened from the moment she and Monny entered Rechid Bey's gate, to the moment they came out. Then there was Antoun's story to follow; and after that we had to compare notes: how everybody had felt, what everybody had thought, what everybody had done. This subject was inexhaustible, and kept cropping up in the midst of others; but that of Mabella Hânem, her escape from bondage and from "conversion" to Islam, and what revenge Rechid was likely to take, was almost as engrossing.
When at last, late that evening, I managed to get Biddy alone for a moment, she could no more be induced to talk of herself than if she had been a ghost without visible existence, a mere voice, to speak of others, Monny by preference. What a heroine Monny had been from first to last! And what did I think now about the foolishness of that theory—the theory that Bedr was a spy, and had led his employers to believe that "Mrs. Jones" was travelling with her stepdaughter concealed under an impeccably important nom de guerre?
What I thought was, that we must get hold of Miss Rachel Guest, and question her as to her whole acquaintance with the Armenian learning how, by all that was incredible, the double mystery of mixed names had originated. "Monny knows only that Rachel was supposed to be the heiress, testing her personal attractions by pretending to be the poor school teacher," said Brigit. "The child's been wildly enjoying the situation, for she was tired of young men. Rachel wasn't! And Rachel's been profiting by it—far more wickedly. As for Esmé, I'm sure no thought of her name coming into this business, ever entered Monny's head. We must try to find out what Bedr said to Rachel at the beginning, as you advise, Duffer—and all about it. After what I told you that I heard from Esmé about an exciting love romance, any mistake of this sort might be particularly dangerous. The Organization might think it had more right than ever to be bitter against us. And now, I don't mind your confiding in your friend Captain Fenton. I think I'd like him to know my story."
What Biddy had told me about Esmé was, that the girl had confessed, in a letter, having been made love to (during a summer holiday in the mountains with friends) by the son of a man her father had deeply injured. The accidental meeting had been a real romance: the girl and the young man thought that no one, save themselves, shared their secret. But who could tell, when Fate itself stood between them with a drawn sword? The love of Romeo for Juliet was a safe and simple affair compared with the merest flirtation between the daughter of Richard O'Brien and the son of John Halloran, whom O'Brien's testimony had sent to prison for life.
Sometimes I thought, as the days went on, that Biddy guessed—not my change of heart, but my new understanding of it: and that she wanted quietly and gently to show me, according to Bill Bailey's pet expression, there was "nothing doing." Her expressed wish that Fenton should hear her story, looked to my suddenly suspicious mind as if his strong personality and his extremely picturesque position had made an appeal to the romance in her, as it had in the case of Mrs. East and perhaps Monny Gilder. Always interested in "Mrs. Jones," from first sight, when he had laughingly said that the "little sprite of a woman" would be almost too alluring if surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue, Anthony was now frankly preoccupied with her affairs. He was not even annoyed that, unaided by me, her quick mind had grasped the secret of his identity. "It was like her to spring on to it by instinct," he said, smiling that thoughtful smile of his, which was more than ever effective in his Arab get up. "And like her not to give anybody else a hint, except you, of course—though she must have been tempted sometimes. I suppose"—and he looked up quickly—"she hasn't given any one else a hint?"