Gavin rose and offered him his hand. "I will start directly I have seen the Lady Evelyn," he said. BOOK III THE LIGHT CHAPTER XXIII BUKHAREST "In America, my dear Gavin, they would certainly name you for a very prince of hustlers." The speaker, a lad of twenty-two years of age, leaned back indolently in his chair and sipped a tiny cup of Turkish coffee with lazy satisfaction. Gifted with brown curly hair, ridiculously blue eyes, and a beardless chin, Cambridge had named him ironically "the Lamb." His name was Arthur Kenyon, and there had been no prettier athlete in all London when he was there, precisely ten days ago. "Yes," he went on, "you lure me to this place, which might be half a mile at the most from the infernal regions, and promise me a ripping holiday. I come like a sheep to the shearing and what is my reward? Hours of self-contemplation--long musings upon an innocent past, and the thermometer at 112° Fahrenheit in the shade. Ye gods, what a thing to be a travelling Englishman!" They sat in the restaurant of the Hotel Moskowa at Bukharest, justly famous, as the English boy had said, for its historic prices and ancient meats, long matured. Gavin Ord, grown a little older since he left Derbyshire some fifteen days ago, had a map of Roumania before him and all his intentions appeared to be concentrated upon this. The restaurant, despite the season of the year, could show a fair array of pretty women in Vienna gowns and of little gold-laced officers who chaperoned them. The heat of the night had become intense and a great block of ice upon a marble pedestal melted visibly as though despairing of the effort to exist. Energy might have been deemed a forgotten art but for the frantic exertions of a typical gypsy band which fiddled as though its very salvation depended upon the marvels of its presto. "My dear Arthur," said Gavin at length, folding up his map and lighting a cigarette with the air of one who is thinking of anything but a smoker's pleasure, "I am a beast, certainly. Exit, then, I am a successful beast." "Do you mean to say that you have found him?" "Good Master Indiscretion--I have found the house which Cook built and I am going to visit it to-morrow." "Yes, yes, of course, that ancient and interesting Roman building ... well, I always wanted to see Roumania, and, of course, we shall do Buda-Pesth going back. By the way, do you notice that acrobat playing the 'cello over there? Don't turn round yet. He's been watching you ever since we sat down just as though he loved you dearly." Gavin smoked for a little while without shifting his position in any way. Presently he said: "I don't know why he should. Unless they watched me from London, which is not improbable, they are hardly likely to know of my arrival yet. When you have drunk your coffee, we'll go and take a turn on the Corso. The 'cellist certainly likes me. I see what you mean."