He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's Hotel.
And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to and she might want to if she knew the truth.
But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails—simple and obvious channel—but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, especially, Tewfick would be on his guard.
Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands. The house servants—? There were hours, one day, when Ryder sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered sais who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any creature, and he stayed his tongue.
Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with some official's pretty wife who had the entrée to a pasha's daughter that she could be induced to make use of it for him.
Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time was short for establishing those confidential relations which were what he required now.
Jinny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Jinny would not return for another week. And if she changed her mind and took the boat back—as he, alack! had advised—instead of the express, then she would be longer.
And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now since he and McLean had heard the Soudanese locking the door behind them.
There seemed nothing for it but to trust to that idea which had been slowly shaping in his mind.