"You expected to find a friend, then?"
"Not here," Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the blinding square.
He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the bedlam crowd filling a side street. With sure sense of direction, he threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate. There he turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the occasional discriminating tourist. Maitre Mouquère was proud of the anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves as he would a plague. In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the world of Alexandria.
Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer. After a glass with Maitre Mouquère and a half hour's discussion of the day's great news, Woodhouse pleaded a touch of the sun, and went to his room. There he remained, until the gold of sunset had faded from the Mosque of Omar's great dome and all the city from Pharos and its harbor hedge of masts to El Meks winked with lights. Then he took carriage to the railroad station and entrained for Ramleh. What South Kensington is to London and the Oranges are to New York, Ramleh is to Alexandria—the suburb of homes. There pretty villas lie in the lap of the delta's greenery, skirted by canals, cooled by the winds off Aboukir Bay and shaded by great palms—the one beauty spot in all the hybrid product of East and West that is the present city of Alexander.
Remembering directions he had received in Berlin, Woodhouse threaded shaded streets until he paused before a stone gateway set in a high wall. On one of the pillars a small brass plate was inset. By the light of a near-by arc, Woodhouse read the inscription on it:
EMIL KOCH, M.D.,
32 Queen's Terrace.
He threw back his shoulders with a sudden gesture, which might have been taken for that of a man about to make a plunge, and rang the bell. The heavy wooden gate, filling all the space of the arch, was opened by a tall Numidian in house livery of white. He nodded an affirmative to Woodhouse's question, and led the way through an avenue of flaming hibiscus to a house, set far back under heavy shadow of acacias. On every hand were gardens, rank foliage shutting off this walled yard from the street and neighboring dwellings. The heavy gate closed behind the visitor with a sharp snap. One might have said that Doctor Koch lived in pretty secure isolation.
Woodhouse was shown into a small room off the main hall, by its furnishings and position evidently a waiting-room for the doctor's patients. The Numidian bowed, and disappeared. Alone, Woodhouse rose and strolled aimlessly about the room, flipped the covers of magazines on the table, picked up and hefted the bronze Buddha on the onyx mantel, noted, with a careless glance, the position of the two windows in relation to the entrance door and the folding doors, now shut, which doubtless gave on the consultation room. As he was regarding these doors they rolled back and a short thickset man, with a heavy mane of iron-gray hair and black brush of beard, stood between them. He looked at Woodhouse through thick-lensed glasses, which gave to his stare a curiously intent bent.
"My office hours are from two to four, afternoons," Doctor Koch said. He spoke in English, but his speech was burred by a slight heaviness on the aspirants, reminiscent of his mother tongue. The doctor did not ask Woodhouse to enter the consultation room, but continued standing between the folding doors, staring fixedly through his thick lenses.
"I know that, Doctor," Woodhouse began apologetically, following the physician's lead and turning his tongue to English. "But, you see, in a case like mine I have to intrude"—it was "haf" and "indrude" as Woodhouse gave these words—"because I could not be here during your office hours. You will pardon?"