They Came to Baghdad Read Online Free Page A

and Principals of Colleges. No, it’s just a feeling —well, time will show. So long. I wish you were coming, too.”
    â€œSo do I,” said Victoria.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    â€œGo round to St. Guildric’s Agency in Gower Street and look for another job,” said Victoria gloomily.
    â€œGood-bye, Victoria. Partir, say mourir un peu,” added Edward with a very British accent. “These French johnnies know their stuff. Our English chaps just maunder on about parting being a sweet sorrow—silly asses.”
    â€œGood-bye, Edward, good luck.”
    â€œI don’t suppose you’ll ever think about me again.”
    â€œYes, I shall.”
    â€œYou’re absolutely different from any girl I’ve ever seen before—I only wish—” The clock chimed a quarter, and Edward said, “Oh hell—I must fly—”
    Retreating rapidly, he was swallowed up by the great maw of London. Victoria remaining behind on her seat absorbed in meditation was conscious of two distinct streams of thought.
    One dealt with the theme of Romeo and Juliet. She and Edward, she felt, were somewhat in the position of that unhappy couple, although perhaps Romeo and Juliet had expressed their feelings in rather more high-class language. But the position, Victoria thought, was the same. Meeting, instant attraction—frustration—two fond hearts thrust asunder. A remembrance of a rhyme once frequently recited by her old nurse came to her mind:
    Jumbo said to Alice I love you,
    Alice said to Jumbo I don’t believe you do,
    If you really loved me as you say you do
    You wouldn’t go to America and leave me in the Zoo.
    Substitute Baghdad for America and there you were!
    Victoria rose at last, dusting crumbs from her lap, and walked briskly out of FitzJames Gardens in the direction of Gower Street. Victoria had come to two decisions: the first was that (like Juliet) she loved this young man, and meant to have him.
    The second decision that Victoria had come to was that as Edward would shortly be in Baghdad, the only thing to do was for her to go to Baghdad also. What was now occupying her mind was how this could be accomplished. That it could be accomplishedsomehow or other, Victoria did not doubt. She was a young woman of optimism and force of character.
    Parting is such sweet sorrow appealed to her as a sentiment no more than it did to Edward.
    â€œSomehow,” said Victoria to herself, “I’ve got to get to Baghdad!”

Three
    I
    T he Savoy Hotel welcomed Miss Anna Scheele with the empressement due to an old and valued client—they inquired after the health of Mr. Morganthal—and assured her that if her suite was not to her liking she had only to say so—for Anna Scheele represented DOLLARS.
    Miss Scheele bathed, dressed, made a telephone call to a Kensington number and then went down in the lift. She passed through the revolving doors and asked for a taxi. It drew up and she got in and directed it to Cartier’s in Bond Street.
    As the taxi turned out of the Savoy approach into the Strand a little dark man who had been standing looking into a shop window suddenly glanced at his watch and hailed a taxi that was conveniently cruising past and which had been singularly blind to the hails of an agitated woman with parcels a moment or two previously.
    The taxi followed along the Strand keeping the first taxi insight. As they were both held up by the lights in going round Trafalgar Square, the man in the second taxi looked out of the left-hand window and made a slight gesture with his hand. A private car, which had been standing in the side street by the Admiralty Arch started its engine and swung into the stream of traffic behind the second taxi.
    The traffic had started on again. As Anna Scheele’s taxi followed the stream of traffic going to the left into Pall Mall, the taxi containing the little dark man swung away to the right,