"Mrs.—er—Jones. Brigit Jones."
"Where's her husband?"
"In his grave."
"Oh! Well, his widow looks ready to bubble over with the joy of life, so I suppose we can't associate spies or anything shady with her? That's too much to hope for?"
"Why to 'hope' for?"
"It would make her too interesting."
"Look here, my dear fellow, you can't have them both!"
The dark eyes of Antoun lit with a spark of surprise and laughter. "I don't want either, thanks. I admire flowers, but I never gather them. I leave them growing. However, you might tell me which one you want for your own buttonhole?" "Really, I don't know," I mumbled, taken aback. "All I do know is, it's not likely I can get either."
Anthony stared at me with a curious expression, then abruptly changed the subject. "You've heard of Sir Marcus Lark?" he asked.
"Of course," said I, surprised at this question sandwiched into our affairs. Sir Marcus Lark is a man who has had his finger in many pies, but I didn't see how he could poke one into ours. Everybody knows Sir M. A. Lark, given a baronetcy by the Radicals some years ago in return for services to the party—starting and running a newspaper which must have cost him fifty thousand pounds before it began to pay. He has financed theatres, and vegetarian restaurants; he owns cocoa plantations and factories, and a garden city; he has a racing yacht which once beat the German Emperor's; he owns two hotels; he has written a book of travel; his name as a director is sought by financial companies; he has lent money to a distressed South American government in the making; and though the success of his enterprises has sometimes hung in the balance for months or years, his wonderful luck seems invariably to triumph in the end; so much so, that "Lark's Luck" has become a well-known heading for newspaper columns, in the middle of which his photograph is inset. At the mention of his name, the oft-seen picture rose before my eyes—a big man, anywhere between thirty-six and fifty—good head, large forehead, curly hair, kind eyes, pugnacious nose, conceited smile under waxed moustache, heavy jaw, unconquerable chin, and prize-fighter's neck and shoulders. "What has Sir Marcus Lark to do with us?" "He's in Egypt—in Cairo just now; and—he's got our mountain."