breath, and turned to him.

"Do you know where I got that girl?" he demanded.

It took several seconds of Falconer's level-lidded look of distaste
to bring home the realization.

"Oh, see here," he protested, "wait till you understand this
thing.... I pulled that girl over Kerissen's back wall at ten
o'clock to-night. I thought she was Miss Beecher, but a mistake had
been made and the wrong girl arrived. But the point is this--_Arlee
Beecher is in that palace_. This girl saw her and talked with her
last night. Now we've got to get her out. It's a two-man job," said
Billy, "or you'd better believe I'd never have come to you again."

He had given it like a punch, and it knocked the breath out of
Falconer for one floored instant. But he was no open-mouthed
believer. The thing was more unthinkable to him than to Billy's
romantic and adventurous mind, and the very notion was so revolting
that he fought it stoutly.

From beginning to end Billy hammered over the story as he knew it,
explaining, arguing, debating, and then he drew out the plans of the
palace and flung them on the table by Falconer while he continued
his excited tramping up and down the room.

Falconer studied the plans, worried his moustache, stared at Billy's
tense and resolute face, and took up the plans again, his own chin
stubborn.

"Granted there's a girl--you can't be sure it's Miss Beecher," he
maintained doggedly. "This Baroff girl had no idea of her name. Now
Miss Beecher would have told her name, the very first thing, it
appears to me, and the names of her friends in Cairo, asking for the
Baroff's offices in getting a letter to me--us."

"She may have been too hurried to get to it. She had so many
questions to ask. And she probably expected to see the girl again
the next day or night."

"Possibly," said Falconer without conviction.

"But where, then, is Miss Beecher?"

"We may hear from her to-morrow morning."

"We won't," said Billy.

Falconer was silent.

"Good Lord!" the American burst out, "there can't be two girls in
Cairo with blue eyes and fair hair whom Kerissen could have lured
there last Wednesday! There can't be two girls with chaperons
departing up the Nile! Why--why--the whole thing's as clear to
me--as--as a house afire!"

"I don't share your conviction."

"Very well, then, if you don't think it is Miss Beecher, you don't
have to go into this thing. If you can feel satisfied to lay the
matter before the ambassado