Waldron had already dressed, and was lying back in a long deck-chair enjoying a cigarette, and gazing away at the crimson sunset, when a tall, thin-faced man of thirty passed along the deck. He, too, was in the conventional dinner-jacket and black cravat, but to his fellow-travellers he was a mystery, for ever since joining them at Wady, Haifa he had kept himself much to himself, and hardly spoken to anyone.
His name was Henri Pujalet, and he was from Paris. His father, Henri Pujalet, the well-known banker of the Rue des Capucines, had died two years before, leaving to his eldest son his great wealth. That was all that was known of him.
Only Hubert Waldron knew the truth the secret of Lolas love.
Ah, my dear friend! he cried in his enthusiastic French way as he approached the Englishman. Well how goes it?
Very well, thanks, responded the diplomat in French, for truth to tell he had cultivated the strangers acquaintance and had watched with amused curiosity the subtle glances which Lola sometimes cast towards him.
The secret lover sank into a chair at the diplomats side and slowly lit a cigarette.
He was a good-looking even handsome man, with refined and regular features, a smiling, complacent expression, and a small, well-trimmed moustache. But his cheek-bones were high, and his eyes rather narrowly set. To-day no young Frenchman as was the fashion ten years ago wears a beard. Time was when the beard was carefully oiled, perfumed, trimmed and curled. But to-day the fashion in France is a hairless face as in America and in England.
Waldron examined his companion for the hundredth time. Yes, he was a mystery. He had given the name of Pujalet to the steward, but was that his real name? Was he the son of Pujalet, the dead banker of the Rue des Capucines?
Old Gigleux often chatted with him, for were they not compatriots? But the white-headed old fellow apparently held no suspicion that he was his nieces secret lover who had travelled those many miles from Europe in order to be near her.
The situation was not without its humours. Of all the persons on board that gay crowd returning to Cairo to spend New Years Day, only Hubert Waldron knew the truth. And as a diplomat he stood by and watched in silence, aware that the looker-on always sees most of the game.
He had had many amusing chats on deck and in the smoking-room with Henri Pujalet, whom he had found to be a much more cosmopolitan person than he had at first imagined. He seemed to know Europe well even Madrid for he spoke of certain dishes at the Lhardy and the excellence of the wines at the Tournié in the Calle Mayor, of the Flamenco at the Gate Nero, and the smart teas in the ideal room in the Calle de Alcata; all of which were familiar, of course, to Waldron.
Equally familiar to him was Petersburg, with Cubats and such-like resorts; he knew the gay Boulevard Hotel in Bucharest, and the excellence of its sterlet, the Nazionale and Father Abrahams in Rome; the Hungaria in Budapest, the Adlon in Berlin, the Pera Palace in Constantinople, as indeed most of the other well-known resorts to which the constant traveller across Europe naturally drifts at one time or another.
That Henri Pujalet was a cosmopolitan was perfectly clear to his companion. Yet he was, as certainly, a man of mystery.
Hubert Waldron, a shrewd observer and a keen investigator of anything appertaining to mystery, watched him daily, and daily became more and more interested.
His suspicions were aroused that all was not quite right. Pujalets attitude towards Lola was quite remarkable. Not by the slightest glance or gesture did he give away his secret. To all on board he was to mademoiselle a stranger, and, moreover, perfectly oblivious to her very existence.
The two men chatted idly until suddenly the dinner-gong was sounded by a black-faced, grinning Nubian, who carried it up and down the deck beating it noisily.
Then he descended to the big white-and-gold saloon, where a few moments later there assembled a merry, chattering, and laughing crowd.
In the midst of dinner Waldron rose from the table and ascended to the upper deck and got his handkerchief. As he approached his cabin, however, he saw someone leave it, and disappear round the stern of the vessel. The incident instantly impressed itself upon his mind as a curious one, and in his evening slippers he sped lightly to the end of the deck and gazed after the receding figure of the fugitive.
It was Henri Pujalet!
Waldron returned instantly to his cabin in wonder why the Frenchman had intruded there.
As far as he could see nothing had been disturbed. All was in order, just as he had left it after dressing.
Only one object had been moved his small, steel, travelling dispatch-box, enclosed in its green canvas case. This, which had been upon a shelf, was now lying upon the bed. The green canvas cover had been unfastened, displaying the patent brass lock by the famous maker.
It had been examined and tampered with. An attempt had, no doubt, been made to open it, and the person who had made that attempt was none other than the tall, good-looking man who had so swiftly and silently descended to the saloon and now, unnoticed, retaken his place at dinner.
Well, gasped Waldron, taking out his keys and unlocking the steel box to reassure himself that his private papers were intact, this is curious distinctly curious, to say the least!
Chapter Seven.
The Night of the Golden Pig
It wanted thirty minutes to midnight.
The New Years Eve fun at Shepheards Hotel in Cairo was fast and furious.
Ministerial officers and their women-folk, British officers of the garrison, officials and their wives from all parts of Egypt, Society from the other hotels, and a sprinkling of grave, brown-faced Egyptian gentlemen in frock coats and fezes, all congregate here to dine, to dance, to throw serpentines, and to make merry by touching the golden pig a real pig covered with gold paint at the coming of the New Year.
That night was no exception, for the salons were crowded to overflowing, champagne flowed freely, and everyone laughed heartily at the various antics of the great assembly. Cosmopolitan it was, in every sense of the word, for most European languages could be heard there. In the ballroom a great dance was in progress, while the supper-room was crowded to suffocation, and in the big salons one could hardly move about so dense was the well-dressed crowd.
Upon this scene Hubert Waldron gazed when he arrived in a cab from the Savoy. Though Lola, her uncle, and Miss Lambert had, on landing, obtained rooms at Shepheards, the Englishman had failed to do so, and had therefore gone to the Savoy, whither Henri Pujalet had also gone, as well as Chester Dawson, the Easthams, and several other members of the party.
Already they had been in Cairo three days, and though Waldron had watched Pujalet continuously, the lovers had not held any clandestine meeting.
As he elbowed his way through that New Years Eve crush in the big Oriental lounge, however, he suddenly came upon the pair. Lola, her face beaming with supreme pleasure, was dressed in simple, yet becoming taste in turquoise blue, with a touch of the same colour in her dark hair, while the Frenchman, erect and well-groomed, presented a particularly smart appearance. Neither noticed the diplomat, so engrossed were they in their conversation. The opportunity of meeting was, of course, a unique one, for even if her uncle discovered her how could he reprove her for dancing with a man who had been their fellow-traveller for nearly three weeks?