'Impossible! He is dead,' replied Allan, feeling curiously uncomfortable nevertheless.
'I would I were as sure of a thousand guineas,' said Cameron.
'One reads of such things only in romances—yet the eyes and beard were the colour of those of Holcroft.'
'Truth is always strange—"stranger than fiction," as Byron tells us.'
'Stranger, indeed, should this prove the case. But, if alive, how comes he here, and why does he seem to dog me?'
'I regarded him at first vacantly, then with indistinct recognition, and anon with certainty, though the beard and red tarboosh disguise him so much!'
Allan Graham knew not what to think. If the man referred to was actually Holcroft, by what miracle was he then in Grand Cairo, and how was he rescued from the sea? Strange it was, indeed, that if the lurker at the hotel was he, Allan should dream of him at the moment of his appearance in the balcony.
'There is always a skeleton in every fellow's cupboard, and Hawke Holcroft was the skeleton in mine, poor devil!' said Allan.
'You are still disposed to think and speak of him in the past tense?' observed Cameron, whose mind was made up as to his identity.
'I cannot do otherwise, but the moment the parade is dismissed we shall make inquiries at the hotel.'