figures of
native women who mingled with the crowd, padding timidly with bare feet
thrust into slippers. The foreigners mistook them no doubt for Arab
ladies, not knowing that ladies never walk; and were but little
interested in the old, unveiled women with chocolate-coloured faces, who
begged, or tried to sell picture-postcards. The arcaded streets were
full of light and laughter, noise of voices, clatter of horses' hoofs,
carriage-wheels, and tramcars, bells of bicycles and horns of motors.
The scene was as gay as any Paris boulevard, and far more picturesque
because of the older, Eastern civilization in the midst of, though never
part of, an imported European life--the flitting white and brown
figures, like thronging ghosts outnumbering the guests at a banquet.

Stephen and Nevill Caird went up the Rue Bab-el-Oued, leading to the old
town, and so came to the Hotel de la Kasbah, where Victoria Ray was
staying. It looked more attractive at night, with its blaze of
electricity that threw out the Oriental colouring of some crude
decorations in the entrance-hall, yet the place appeared less than ever
suited to Victoria.

An Arab porter stood at the door, smoking a cigarette. His fingers were
stained with henna, and he wore an embroidered jacket which showed
grease-spots and untidy creases. It was with the calmest indifference he
eyed the Englishmen, as Nevill inquired in French for Miss Ray.

The question whether she were "at home" was conventionally put, for it
seemed practically certain that she must be in the hotel. Where could
she, who had no other friends than they, and no chaperon, go at night?
It was with blank surprise, therefore, that he and Stephen heard the
man's answer. Mademoiselle was out.

"I don't believe it," Stephen muttered in English, to Nevill.

The porter understood, and looked sulky. "I tell ze troot," he
persisted. "Ze gentlemens no believe, zay ask some ozzer."

They took him at his word, and walked past the Arab into the hotel. A
few Frenchmen and Spaniards of inferior type were in the hall, and at
the back, near a stairway made of the cheapest marble, was a window
labelled "Bureau." Behind this window, in a cagelike room, sat the
proprietor at a desk, adding up figures in a large book. He was very
fat, and his chins went all the way round his neck in grooves, as if his
thick throat might pull out like an accordion. There was something
curiously exotic about him, as there is in persons of m