CHAPTER VIII
THE WORDS OF DELILAH
O'Rourke dined alone. It was his custom, for his few friends in Cairo were, for the most part, out of town at the time. And yet, somehow, this evening he was resenting his loneliness, finding it depressive.
To his extreme disgust, too, he discovered that his interview with Prince Viazma had been of such length that, by the time he was suitably dressed for dining, his goddess of the Egyptian night had taken her departure; he was therefore deprived of what would have been some consolation to him in his gloom—the interchange of glances, stealthy and sweet, that had been theirs on other nights, lending a glamour to all the evening for O'Rourke.
He grumbled, eating slowly and considering.
"There's one thing certain," he told himself. "'Tis no place for the O'Rourke any more—Cairo. 'Tis very likely to become unhealthy to a person of me excitable disposition. I know too much, and there are entirely too many thugs in the city streets—Greeks and Armenians, for instance—that'd think of sticking a knife in me back as soon as they'd think of taking pay for the pleasure av doing it.
"Small wonder," he mused again, later, "that me friend, Doone Pasha, has been unable to get me a billet in the Khedival army! Oho! sure, 'tis like a searchlight on a dark night—this little proposal of me prince incognito. I begin to see various things. And the first and foremost av them
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