"
"Thank you," said, Davidson, inwardly startled at the savage tone. "I
think I will sit down for a moment and have a drink, after all."
This was not what Schomberg had expected to hear. He called brutally:
"Boy!"
The Chinaman approached, and after referring him to the white man by a
nod the hotel-keeper departed, muttering to himself. Davidson heard him
gnash his teeth as he went.
Davidson sat alone with the billiard-tables as if there had been not a
soul staying in the hotel. His placidity was so genuine that he was not
unduly, fretting himself over the absence of Heyst, or the mysterious
manners Schomberg had treated him to. He was considering these things in
his own fairly shrewd way. Something had happened; and he was loath to
go away to investigate, being restrained by a presentiment that somehow
enlightenment would come to him there. A poster of CONCERTS EVERY
EVENING, like those on the gate, but in a good state of preservation,
hung on the wall fronting him. He looked at it idly and was struck by
the fact--then not so very common--that it was a ladies' orchestra;
"Zangiacomo's eastern tour--eighteen performers." The poster stated
that they had had the honour of playing their select repertoire before
various colonial excellencies, also before pashas, sheiks, chiefs, H. H.
the Sultan of Mascate, etc., etc.
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