Unknown by Unknown

whenever they were lucky enough to get a table near a window.
    “Don’t look now,” Fran nudged her out of her reverie, “but la Barlow is over on the other side of the room.”
    Katie drew her eyes away from the view and sought the blonde head of the model among the crowded tables. “I see her,” she said at last, as she caught sight of the thin, rather sharp features with their tipped amber eyes, so like a cat’s.
    “And with a strange man,” Fran said with satisfaction. She looked aslant at the couple across the restaurant and raised her fair brows in approval. “He’s quite attractive, too, isn’t he?”
    “I don’t think so,” Katie disagreed, albeit a trifle uncertainly. “Too sleek-looking.”
    “No,” said Fran, studying them from behind the cover of the menu, “sort of sultry-looking, I’d say—a dash of the Arabian nights, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    Katie drew a frown with her brows as she, too, surreptitiously looked at the man. Although it was difficult to judge while he was sitting down at the table, Katie thought he looked as if her would be tall and from what she could tell he was slender in build, but powerful-looking about the shoulders. His hair was black and well oiled, waved almost to the point of being crinkly, and his wide, dark eyes paid compliments to his companion with every flick of the long black lashes. His hands, she noticed, were long and slender and moved with a certain nervousness as he talked, and Katie wondered why he looked familiar.
    “You’re taking quite an interest in him considering you don’t like his looks,” Fran teased.
    “I don’t,” Katie said thoughtfully. “I just can’t remember where I’ve seen him before.”
    “Oh, really?” Fran turned wide-eyed interest on her friend. “Do try to remember, Katie, please!”
    “I am trying,” Katie said, “but it’s no use, if ever I try to remember anything I only succeed in forgetting it more.” She gave her attention to the menu. “I shall probably remember if I don’t try so hard,” she said. “Let’s forget about Eleanor Barlow and her boy-friend, I’m hungry!”
    It was while she was eating the last of her fruit sundae that the memory came back to her, and then prompted unconsciously by Fran. Eleanor Barlow and her escort had already been seated when Katie and Fran came into the restaurant, so that they had finished their meal a little before the two girls.
    “Presents,” Fran said suddenly, her eyes again on the other couple. One of the man’s long, beringed hands pushed a paper-wrapped package across the table, the hand still covering it until his companion took it under her own hand and dropped it rather hastily into her handbag.
    “I expect models get plenty of presents,” Katie said, watching the elegant blonde pull on her gloves. “Jewellery and chocolates, all the rewards of sinful living,” she laughed at her own dramatics.
    “That package is too small for chocolates, it must be jewellery,” said Fran practically, and blinked her surprise when Eleanor Barlow rose and left the table, while her erstwhile companion still sat there smoking a cigar. “That’s funny,” she said. “She’s gone and he’s still there.”
    “Mmm,” Katie followed the model’s progress as she crossed the restaurant, “and she hasn’t gone to the ladies’, she’s gone out altogether.”
    Fran shrugged. “More fool her,” she said. “The Arabian knight is still with us.” She tossed back her fair hair the better to see him. “He is rather attractive, Katie, he looks like an Eastern prince or a sultan, something exotic.”
    “That’s it!” Katie’s eyes shone with triumph as she remembered. “Sultan! That’s where I’ve seen him before, the sultan’s palace.”
    Fran stared at her curiously. “Are you dreaming,” she asked anxiously, “or has the heat been too much for you?”
    “No, you goose,” Katie explained patiently. “The ‘Kismet’, where Jamie took me to dinner the