"Good news—what?" he said with a genial smile.
"If authentic," said the dogged Billy.
"Of all the fanatic f——!" The sandy-haired young man checked his explosiveness in mid-air. He gave a glance at the bulge of bandage beneath Billy's coat sleeve and dropped into a chair beside him. "How's the arm?" he inquired in a tone of restraint.
"Fine," said Billy without enthusiasm.
"Glad of that. Afraid the canal bath wouldn't do it any good. Beastly old place, that." Then the Englishman gave a sudden chuckle. "It's a regular old lark when you come to think of it!"
"Our lack of luck wasn't any great lark." Savagely Bill speared his bacon.
"Luck? Why we—Oh, come now, my dear fellow, you can't pretend to maintain those suspicions now! Of course the letter is authentic!" Falconer spoke between irritation and raillery. "That Turkish fellow could hardly fake that letter to them, could he? No, and we will have to acknowledge ourselves actuated by a too-hasty suspicion—inevitable under the circumstance—and be grateful that the uncertainty is over. That's the only way to look at it."
"We don't know that the Evershams have received a 'letter.' It might be another fraudulent telegram that was sent them from Alexandria."
"That is a bit too thick. You're a Holmes for suspicion!" Falconer laughed. "I believe if Miss Beecher herself walked into this dining room you would question if she were not a deceiving effigy!"
"I might question that anyway." Billy's tone was dry. "And I daresay I am a fool. But that dancer's story is pretty straight if she didn't know the names, and it fits in disasterously well with my limousine story."