Woodhouse read right over the name and turned another page a bit impatiently. This he scanned with seeming eagerness, while the clerk stood with pen poised.
"Um! When is the first boat out for Gibraltar?" Woodhouse asked.
"Well, sir, the _Princess Mary_ is due to sail at dawn day after to-morrow," the Greek answered judiciously. "She is reported at Port Said to-day, but, of course, the war----"
"But you wish a room, sir--nice room, with bath, overlooking----"
"Not here," Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the blinding square.
He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the bedlam crowd filling a side street. With sure sense of direction, he threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate. There he turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the occasional discriminating tourist. Maitre Mouquère was proud of the anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves as he would a plague. In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the world of Alexandria.
Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer. After a glass with Maitre Mouquère and a half hour's discussion of the day's great news, Woodhouse pleaded a touch of the sun, and went to his room. There he remained, until the gold of sunset had faded from the Mosque of Omar's great dome and all the city from Pharos and its harbor hedge of masts to El Meks winked with lights. Then he took carriage to the railroad station and entrained for Ramleh. What South Kensington is to London and the Oranges are to New York, Ramleh is to Alexandria--the suburb of homes. There pretty villas lie in the lap of the delta's greenery, skirted by canals, cooled by the winds off Aboukir Bay and shaded by great palms--the one beauty spot in all the hybrid product of East and West that is the present city of Alexander.
Remembering directions he had received in Berlin, Woodhouse threaded shaded streets until he paused before a stone gateway set in a high wall. On one of the pillars a small brass plate was inset. By the light of a near-by arc, Woodhouse read the inscription on it: