when vital bits appear to be missing; and if she could make a cat's paw
of Cleopatra, the witch would not be above doing it. I bore her no
grudge--who could bear soft-eyed, laughing, yet tragic Biddy a grudge?
--but I wished that she and Monny were at the other end of the deck.

"I--er--really, I don't know where my friend is just now," I answered,
with more or less foundation of truth.

"I wonder if I didn't read in the papers about a Captain Fenton who
took advantage of leave he'd got, to make a rush for the Balkans, and
see the fighting from the lines of the Allies?" Biddy murmured with
dreadful intelligence. "Can he be your Captain Fenton? I fancy he'd
been stationed in the Sudan; and he was officially supposed to have
gone home to spend his leave in England. Anyhow, there was a row of
some sort after he and another man dropped down on to the Turks out of
a Greek aeroplane. Or was it a Servian one? Anyhow, I know he oughtn't
to have been in it; and 'Paterfamilias' and 'Patriot' wrote letters to
the _Times_ about British officers who didn't mind their own business.
Why, I saw the papers on board this ship! They were old ones. Papers on
ships always are. But I think they came on at Algiers or somewhere."

"Probably 'somewhere,'" I witheringly replied. "_I_ didn't come on at
Algiers, so I don't know anything about it."

"Diplomatists never do know anything official, do they, Duffer dear?"
smiled Biddy. "I'll wager your friend is interesting, even if he does
spell himself with an 'H', and weighs two stone less than his namesake
from Rome. Mrs. East believes in reincarnation, and I'm not sure I
don't, though Monny's so young she doesn't believe in anything. Just
suppose your friend is a reincarnation of Antony without an 'H'? And