So much Billy had already arranged and now after a hasty breakfast he was off to the consul, where he proceeded to unfold his story while the consul drew little circles on his blotter and looked out of the corners of his eyes at this astonishing young man.

He made no comment when Billy paused.  Perhaps he could think of none adequate, or perhaps, after all, he had ceased to be amazed.  He merely said slowly and thoughtfully, “Of course the dancer’s story is all you really have to go upon.  You had better bring her here.”

“Nothing easier,” Billy declared, and thinking a cab as prompt as a telephone he drove briskly off.

The hotel held a shock for him.  Fritzi Baroff was gone.  She had gone the evening before, the clerk reported, consulting the register, and she had paid her bill.  As he had not been the one on duty then he knew nothing more about it.  She had left no address.

Ultimately the clerk who had been on duty was unearthed in the labyrinths of the hotel’s backgrounds, but he could supply very little further except the certainty that she had paid her bill in person, and the vague belief that she had been accompanied.  This belief was companioned by a hazy notion that some one had called on her that evening.

Even Billy’s sense of humor was unstirred by the half-cynical sympathy of the night-clerk’s gaze; Billy didn’t feel a laugh anywhere within him.  He was balked.  The dancer had vanished with her story, and that story was essential to the consul.  Like a fool he must return empty-handed with this yarn of her disappearance and the consul would be justified in declaring that he had no actual proof to act upon.  Which was precisely what the consul did, but he offered, impressed with Billy’s earnestness, “to take the matter up,” with the proper authorities.

It seemed the best that could be done.  Billy urged him to prompt action, and to himself he promised some prompt action of a totally unofficial character.  He knew now what he was going to do, or rather he thought he did, for the day still held its unsettling surprises for him, and as he set forth on business bent that afternoon he found himself besieged by a skinny little boy in tattered blue robes, who danced around him with a handful of dirty postcards.

“Be off,” said Billy, in vigorous Arabic, and the little boy answered proudly, in most excellent English, “I am a messenger, sir.  I am the boy who held the canoe that night.  Buy a postcard, sir?  Only six piastres a dozen, six piastres, Views of Egypt, the Sphinx, the Nile, the——­”

Impatiently Billy cut him short.

“Never mind the bluff.  No one is listening.  What’s your message?”

“The streets have ears, sir.  Buy a postcard?...  I have come from the palace.  I brought in the bread.  I—­I got in under their nose while the big Mohammed was turned away without sight of his uncle,” bragged the little Imp.  “I am a clever boy, I. No one else so clever to find out things.  The American man did well to come to me.”