“Are you going to stay long in Cairo?” he asked Vansittart, when they were within sight of Alexandria.
“Not long. Perhaps only till I get my luggage. I shall go up the Nile.”
“You’ll find it rather hot before you’ve been a long way.”
“Oh, I don’t mind heat. I’m not a feverish subject,” said Vansittart, lightly, having no more idea of going up the Nile than of going to the moon.
“You’ll stop at Sheppard’s, of course?”
“Yes, decidedly. I’m told it’s a very good hotel.”
While they were nearing their port he contrived to get a good deal of information about the steamers that touched there. He meant to get off on the first boat that sailed after he landed. All the interval he wanted was the time to buy some ready-made clothes and a valise, so that he might not appear on board the homeward-bound steamer in the miserable condition in which he had introduced himself to the captain of the P. and O.
He parted with that officer with every expression of friendliness.
“I shan’t forget how good you’ve been to a traveller in distress,” he said lightly; “you may not hear of me for a month or two, perhaps. I may be up the Nile—”
“Take care of the climate,” interjected the captain.
“But as soon as I go back to London I shall write to you. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Smith, and good luck to you for a fine swimmer wherever you go.”
“Oh, I won a cup or two at Oxford,” answered the other. “We rather prided ourselves on our swimming in my set.”
He went to a restaurant where he could sit under an awning and read the latest papers that had found their way to Alexandria. There were plenty of Paris papers—Galignani, Le Figaro, Le Temps. There was a Turin paper, very stale—and there was a copy of the Daily Telegraph that had been left by some traveller, and which was a fortnight old. Nothing to fear there. Vansittart breathed more freely, and thought of going on to Cairo. But second thoughts warned him that Cairo was very English, and that he might meet someone he knew there. Better to stick to his first plan, and go back to England by the first steamer that would take him.
He had to think of his possessions at Danieli’s, and whether the things he had left there would provide a clue to his identity. He thought not. He had not given his name to the hall porter.
The hotel was crowded, and he had—like a convict—been simply known as “150,” the number of his room.
Clothes, portmanteau, dressing-bag, bore only his initials, J. V. He had been travelling in lightest marching order; carrying no books save those which he picked up on his way, no writing materials, except the compact little case in his dressing-bag. It was his habit to destroy all letters as soon as he had read them—even his mother’s, after a second or third reading. His card-case, notecase, and purse were all in his pockets when he made the plunge. No, he had left nothing at Danieli’s; nor had he left Danieli’s deep in debt, for he had paid his account on Tuesday morning, with a half-formed intention of starting for Verona by the early train on Wednesday. He could resign himself to the loss of portmanteau and contents, and the plain pigskin bag, which had seen good service and had been scraped and battered upon many a platform.
Reflection told him that he had nothing to fear from the newspapers yet awhile, since no newspaper could have travelled faster than the steamer that had brought him, while the news of that homicide at Venice was hardly important enough to be telegraphed to any Egyptian journal. No, he was safe so far; but he told himself that the best thing he could do was to get back to England and the wilderness of London; while the Berenice and her good-natured captain went on to Bombay, where, no doubt, the captain would read of that fatal brawl in the Venetian caffè, and identify his passenger as the English tourist who had stabbed another man to death.
Vansittart pulled himself together, counted his money, and rejoiced at finding that he had enough for his voyage home, and a trifle over for incidental expenses and a small outfit. The greater part of his money was in English banknotes, about which no questions would be asked.
He went to the steamboat office, and found that there was a P. and O. boat leaving that night for London, so he took his passage on board her, selected his berth, and then drove off to an outfitter’s to get his kit, and a new cabin trunk, just big enough to hold his belongings. He bought a few French novels, and those small necessities of life without which the civilized man feels himself a savage.
His ship sailed at midnight. He was on board her early in the evening, pacing the deck in the balmy night, and looking at the lighted town, the massive quays, which testify to English enterprise, the Pharos sending out its long lines of bright white light seaward—the gigantic breakwater—all that makes the Egyptian port of today in some wise worthy of the Alexandria of old, when her twin obelisks stood out against the sky, and when her name meant all that was grandest in the splendour of the antique world.
Vansittart looked at the starlit sky and lamplit city with a dull unobservant gaze, while the burden upon his mind deadened his sense of all things fair and strange, and made him indifferent
