sent when opportunity arose. One of the servants below stairs, said the
man, was his father, who might during the next day be able to slip out
as if on some errand. Then he would perhaps take a letter, if he could
be sure of good pay, and that he would not be delivered up to the
police. So Anthony had written on a sheet torn from his notebook, and
made an envelope of another sheet. The address of the Ghezireh Palace
had helped the man to believe that no evil would reach his father; and
a "sweetener" in the shape of all Anthony's ready money had done the
rest. But evidently the old man had not succeeded in finding an excuse
for an errand until after the noon hour, and meanwhile time had seemed
long in the House of the Crocodile. When the girls waked, wanting to go
home, they were ill. They found the game not worth the candle--but
Anthony's presence had given them comfort. They were humble, and
remorseful; and Bedr was so conspicuously a worm that Monny consented
to his discharge. "It would take more time than we've got to make him
worth converting," she said to Rachel when the Armenian had carefully
laid all the blame of the expedition upon her shoulders.

Never were two runaway children more glad to be found and restored to
their anxious relatives than Monny Gilder and Rachel Guest. As for
Bedr, he took his dismissal, with a week's wages, submissively; but the
gravest question concerning him still lacked an answer. Had he merely
been officious and indiscreet in guiding the girls secretly to the
House of the Crocodile, and there procuring hasheesh to buy them
dreams, or had he wanted something to happen, in that house, which had
not happened? A certain amount of browbeating from "Antoun," and
bullying from me, dragged nothing out of him. And perhaps there was
nothing to be dragged. Perhaps it was through oversensitiveness that
Brigit and I dwelt suspiciously upon Bedr's motives, and asked each
other who it was he had expected at the House of the Crocodile. Even