“How long do we wait?” asks Wycherley, as he raises his hand to his neck, which significant action causes the Canadian to laugh softly and move away from him.
“Oh, I’m perfectly harmless, I assure you, my dear boy. Not the least bit excited. Icicles are nothing in comparison. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“It may be five, it may be ten minutes. He will be kept waiting in there. The prophetess must charm him, and hold him until the noise of the passing procession fills the whole street. Then Scutari’s blow will fall. We will leave here when the booming of guns below announces that the camels are coming.”
“Ah, yes!” and Wycherley, of course, begins to whistle the old Scotch song that once upon a time, to a band of desperate Britons caged in beleaguered Lucknow in India, was heard when hope had almost left them, and, wafted over the hills, came to their ears as the sweetest sound on God’s earth.
“No one else enters—see, a couple have just been turned away,” Aleck remarks.
“Yet there goes a red fez in. Turks are welcome—standing room only, greatest success of the Midway. I’m all of a quiver to see the grand entrance of Anthony Wayne, the valet, and the detective who is to represent Miss Dorothy. Great head, that of my respected partner. He believes in fighting fire with fire. Was that the drum signal?”
“No; they’re not ready yet—plenty of time. Be patient, comrade.”
“Jove! there’s my lovely senorita.”
“What, the Spanish cigar girl?”
“Sauntering along with a dandy dude, and casting coquettish looks up into his stupid face.”