Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/25

, St. Augustine, the Riviera, and Canada—the Château, at Quebec.

"Of course, Miss Rand," Whittaker was aggrieved. "You know Major Fraser-Carnie, don't you? Well, when you see him, ask him about it He told me the story. And I"—he looked up hopefully—"I have arrived at an explanation."

Leaning back comfortably in the settee Whittaker contemplated Edith Rand, who, with gray eyes half closed, was staring out of the drawing-room window at the lights of the Château terrace.

Beyond the lights, the mist over the broad bosom of the St. Lawrence was luminous under an invisible moon. But Edith Rand did not see that. She was wondering why the man in the chair by the fireplace within a few feet of them was listening so intently to what the globe-trotter was saying.

She knew he was listening because his cigarette had burned his fingers and he had dropped it hastily. He was playing solitaire on a green card table drawn up before his chair and was making palpable mistakes.

When the chatter of people passing in from the dining-room or leaving the ballroom had drowned Whittaker's voice, the man had leaned ever so slightly nearer. She wished he would turn around.

"Most people would say," Whittaker argued, "that the natives of the caravan—the one that took the white man away from Kashgar, you know—were robbers, brigands from the hills. Kashgar is north of the English lines in upper India, and it is full of outlaws."

"No," said Edith Rand. "You said they only took the man himself, not his belongings."

"Precisely—exactly what I was going to point out." Whittaker joggled his eyeglass triumphantly, "Now