Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/64

  judiciously. "She is reported at Port Said to-day, but, of course, the war" Woodhouse turned away.

"But you wish a room, sir—nice room, with bath, overlooking"

"No."

"You expected to find a friend, then?"

"Not here," Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the blinding square.

He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the bedlam crowd filling a side street. With sure sense of direction, he threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate. There he turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the occasional discriminating tourist. Maitre Mouquère was proud of the anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves as he would a plague. In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the world of Alexandria.

Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer. After a glass with