CHAPTER VII.
CRAIG BUILDS A THEORY.
The idea seems too preposterous to be entertained for a moment, and yet he must give some credence to what his eyes have seen. Besides, the strange presence of Dorothy in the Midway is as yet unexplained, though she has, particularly, promised to enlighten him on the following evening, if he will call.
Craig is sorely puzzled. Many things flash into his mind and confuse him. Perhaps, after all, he might have been mistaken. Why has not Wycherley made some comment upon the matter? So the Bachelor of the Midway, as the actor has, in a spirit of humor, dubbed his athletic companion, when learning how the Canadian has persistently haunted the region of world’s fakes and curiosities, turns now to that party.
“That was something not down on the bills, I’m thinking, Claude,” he remarks.
“I’m puzzling my head over the cause of it all. The pasha was in deadly earnest. Don’timagine that it was a set-up game to clear the room. What did he expect to see?”
“Probably he suspected that someone he knew was playing a joke on him,” says Aleck quietly.
“Humph! he was a bear then,” grunts the other.
“By the way, my dear boy, did she remind you of—well, anyone you had seen before?”
“That’s what makes me mad. A chump in the seat in front got his beastly head between me and the stage, so that I couldn’t see her face. You saw me knock his hat down over his ears. Well, just then the lights went out and I missed the opportunity of solving the riddle of the mysterious veiled prophetess of Cairo Street.”
It is Aleck’s turn to grunt now.
“Was she very beautiful, Craig?”
“Yes, strikingly so. I wish you had seen her. Never mind, did the pasha come out?”
“Rather! he was ahead of us. Perhaps he feared the consequences of his bold act, for these people of the Orient are quick to use knife or yataghan. As he passed I heard him laugh, and, as it is seldom these Turks do that,I can guess he was well pleased over what he had done, and that he recognized the face from which he snatched the veil.”
If ever a sorely puzzled man walked up or down that singular narrow street, our bachelor is the individual. He cudgels his brains for a solution to the enigma and finds it not.
“I don’t see how I can wait until to-morrow night to solve the problem,” he mutters.
“What’s that?” demands Wycherley quickly. “Is it so bad as to keep you from sleeping? Aleck, my poor fellow, I pity you.”
“Nonsense! I’m bothering my head over quite another thing. In fact, I’ve a nut to crack that threatens to do me up. Pardon, old boy, but I’ve been thinking of the story you told me.”
“You mean about old Samson; of course you are deeply interested now—that’s natural. To the best of my belief he’s a millionaire and better—lives in grand style on the lake shore. I walked past the house several times, because, you see, I wanted to understand how the land lay, if I was to be a prospective son-in-law—ha, ha. All dreams knocked in the head now, I assure you, dear boy. I shall feel at libertyto throw a kiss to the pretty girl in the cigar stand. My bonds are gone, the shackles loosened, and Claude Wycherley is again a free man.”
An odd genius this, assuredly. Aleck can never edge a word in so long as his flow of breath lasts, so he usually holds his peace until the actor pauses.
“I want to ask you a few questions,” he says.
“A thousand, if you wish. I would do anything for you, Aleck. Again you have saved my life.”
“How?” demands the Canadian.
“Only for you I should perhaps have been fool enough to have attempted that climb on the wheel. I am in poor condition to-night, and ten to one I would have lost my grit and my grip. Then they’d have swept me up below, and poor Wycherley would have been a bursted bubble, a back number. So I feel awfully grateful to you. Ask me any favor and I’ll put myself out to do it—anything but giving you a tip on the market. That’s a dead secret yet—my plans are not quite perfected. If I win that million now——”
“Hang the million! What I want to know concerns that part of your story in which the Chicagoan brought his Georgian wife—stolen from the Turkish pasha—to this place.”
“All right. What I know is at your service. As I learned it from his royal nibs, Scutari, of course I’m in the dark wherever he is.”
“I realize that,” returns Aleck slowly; “but perhaps I may unearth some fact that will help me to solve this question. You told me the lovely Marda died a year or so after reaching Chicago.”
“So Scutari said and swore to.”
“Yet the daughter knows nothing concerning her mother. Why should Samson Cereal desire to keep the facts from her if there was nothing to conceal?”
“Look here, you’re probing this thing like a lawyer. You go beyond me. I deal in facts, and never worry about the reasons back of them. What are you getting at—didn’t Marda die?”
“Ah! that is what I am unable to say. It is a secret that perhaps only Samson Cereal could explain. As to myself, without any positive proof to back my theory up, I have anotion that all these years the old manipulator of wheat has deceived his daughter.”
“Confusion! I say, you strike hard, Cannuck.”
“That Marda is not dead.”
“Bless me! what puts such a strange notion into your head, mydearfellow?”
“I believe I have seen her.”
Craig smokes his cigar while delivering these sledge-hammer blows. He really enjoys the astonishment of his companion, for generally Wycherley is proof against such assault.
“The plot thickens. It was a great hour when I ran across you, Aleck Craig. When do you think you saw Samson’s Georgian wife, and where?”
“In this street of Cairo, to-night. Plainly, Claude, that was why I was so anxious to learn if you had seen the face of the fortune teller.”
At this the nomad assumes an attitude that is a revelation concerning his ability as an actor. Strange that the world failed to properly appreciate him.
“Great Scott! you don’t mean it—and the pasha—— Why, I’m already half convinced.He suspected—but see here, how could it be that Marda living would appear dead all these years? Incredible!”
“I admit it seems so, and yet perhaps if we knew what Samson Cereal knows, deep down in his heart, we might find it easier to believe. It is a matter of speculation with me, but if you stop and think for a moment you can understand how difficult it would be for happiness to follow such a marriage—he, a progressive American with all the ideas we claim, she born and reared under the blighting influence of Eastern customs. I can readily imagine a quarrel arising and she fleeing back to the sunny land of her birth.”
“What! leaving her child behind?”
“Quite likely. This is theory. When I learn some facts we can see how near I was to being right.”
“Well, continue the theory: why does she come to the land of ice again—the country from which she fled years and years ago?”
Aleck shrugs his shoulders.
“Ask me something easy. Put the question to one of the Sandwich Islanders or a Hottentot. Perhaps she has been drawn bythe mother love to see her child again, for that affection is not confined to any class. The lioness will fight for her whelps. Putting speculation aside, Claude, I am ready to swear that the face of this veiled prophetess was very like that of Dorothy. I was struck dumb by the resemblance. At first I had a positive notion it was she. Then I gradually realized that such a thing was too improbable, and while we walked along my mind evolved the theory which I have given you.”
“Would that have any bearing on the presence of Dorothy here?” asks Wycherley, stopping to light his pipe at the gas jet of a tobacconist, and nodding familiarly to the Greek in charge.
“It might. She told me her mission was a sacred one, and what could be more in keeping with such a word than the search of a child for her mother? However, we may be meddling with what does not concern us, though fortune has apparently decreed that I should be interested in the fortunes of Dorothy Cereal, judging from our several peculiar meetings. Have you any other plans for to-night, comrade?”
“I never leave here until closing time. Can’t explain it, but there’s a charm about this same old Midway that is life to me. You know my nature, Craig, and it just chimes with such a kaleidoscopic scene as this, color, music, and laughter—not a tear or a frown. Heigho! when the curtain rings down and the bugle sounds 'lights out,’ I shall have to seek consolation in making love to that black-eyed Spanish cigar girl, or emigrate with all these Turks, Arabs, and Moors.”