Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/261

 me friend Satan will be cooking up some mischief for me idle hands—that's fair warning for ye, O'Rourke! … I can't," he went on, "keep hitting the wheel. 'Tis meself that has a presintiment that me luck's about to change; and, sure, I've been phenomenally fortunate these last few weeks. I can't sit forever waiting for Doone Pasha to find me a place in the Khedival army. And 'tis against nature that I should be under the fire of madame's eyes much longer without taking me fate in me hands and—raising trouble for meself.

"For the matter of that," he concluded, "'tis time I was on the wing. Me nest gets uncomfortable if I rest in it overlong. I've been here three weeks be the clock. Can I stand it much longer?"

A burst of laughter from a party at a neighboring table changed the current of his meditations.

"There's gaiety for ye!" he commented. "What does all this mean, can ye tell me? When has Shepheard's been so crowded in the middle of the hot months, as now? For why is everybody lingering in Cairo, if 'tis not for to see something drop? I wonder, now, if there's diplomatic troubles in the air? Will France and Turkey be making a little roughhouse for England presently? Is that it? I've heard no word to that effect—nor to the contrary, for that matter. Is there to be a war, and meself not invited?"

He turned to survey the crowd with a speculative eye. But no, he concluded; it seemed no more than the usual gathering of Shepheard's guests—the ordinary aggregation of tourists, with a sprinkling of residents and native Egyptians, and a fair leavening of red-faced, pompous young subalterns of the Army of Occupation.

It was the fag end of an afternoon, painfully hot. Above O'Rourke's head a palm was stirring languidly in the least