As Watkins reached the door that led into the corridor, one of the Raja’s soldiers met him, and spoke to him. Watkins nodded, and turned back.
“The ’Igh Priest is waiting to see Your ’Ighness,” he announced.
“Oh,” Rukh said in surprise, hesitated a minute, then added, “Oh, well, show him in.”
Watkins passed into the corridor and came back almost at once, ushering in an ornate, sinister-faced figure. He must have been wearing not less than half a dozen coats or gowns, furred, beaded and embroidered. Some looked fairly new, several were faded, one was frankly patched. His hands were not over-clean, but they wore many rings. And he wore ear-rings, great hoops of gold with many small jewels hanging from them. His features were at once heavy and sharp, and his shrewd-looking, not unhandsome eyes held the uncanny smoldering fire of the true fanatic’s. His lips were fat and violently red, his cheeks were high, his nose was beaked, and his eyebrows were heavily stained with henna.
The Raja greeted the decorative, if not to English eyes attractive, prelate briefly, but ceremoniously, and as Watkins disappeared, turned to his prisoners.
“I mentioned my Archbishop of York,” he reminded them with a slight grimace. “This is he. Allow me to introduce you. Your Grace,” he said in his best Mayfair manner—His Grace scowled hideously, “Mrs. Crespin—Major Crespin—Dr. Traherne.”
The Priest appeared to understand the situation, for he paid the introduction the acknowledgment of a more than half contemptuous salaam. To be fair to him, Traherne and the Crespins acknowledged it in a manner scarcely more polished. Mrs. Crespin and the physician stared not admiringly, and Major Crespin irreverently muttered, “Well, I’m blowed!”
“The Archbishop’s manners are not good,” the Raja said with a sigh of regret, “but a holy man—a very saintly, spiritual man, believe me. You will excuse him. He regards you, I regret to say, as unclean creatures, whose very presence means pollution. He would be a mine of information for an anthropologist,” he added with a laugh.
None of them made any reply.
Rukh turned to the scowling saint, and they exchanged a few words. Rukh turned again to the three. “His Grace reminds me,” he told them suavely, “of some arrangements for to-morrow’s ceremony which, as Archbishop of Canterbury, I must attend to in person. You will excuse me for half an hour? Pray make yourselves at home. Tiffin at half-past twelve,” he added hospitably. Then he spoke again to the Priest, speaking rather peremptorily. The Priest replied with what may have been scholarly Rukh, but sounded a bitter growl. The Raja turned to Lucilla again, with a laughing, apologetic face. “His grace saysau revoir,” he told them, “and so do I.” He nodded to the two Englishmen, bowed gravely to Mrs. Crespin, and passed into the corridor, the Priest stalking behind him.
As the door closed, Crespin pulled his handkerchief from his cuff, and mopped his forehead—and he turned an eager, troubled look to the decanters. But when his wife and Traherne were just about to speak, he motioned them imperatively to be cautious. Then he stole noiselessly to the billiard-room, went in and searched it. Convinced that no eavesdropper was hidden there, he came back into the snuggery, and closed the billiard-room door.
The others had taken their cue from him. Lucilla was examining the narrow balcony outside the window, Traherne had crept up to the door of the wireless room, and was testing noiselessly its fastening.
“What was the message?” Traherne asked as they drew together near the window—it was farthest from possible listeners.
Antony Crespin smiled. “It said,” he answered, “that the lady had accepted her life—on his conditions.”
“Oh! A trap for us!” was Traherne’s comment.
“Yes,” Crespin agreed. “A put-up job. And a clumsy one.”
“You gave no sign, Antony.” Lucilla laid her hand on her husband’s arm as she spoke, more liking and respect in voice and eyes than she had given him for years, and his fingers closed over hers gratefully. “I think,” she said, “he must have been reassured.”
“Evidently,” Traherne said, “or he wouldn’t have left us here.”
“What to do now?” Crespin asked briskly—in the tone of one who knew there was not much time to lose. He spoke to Traherne, but he kept his hand on his wife’s, holding her hand close on his arm—and she let it stay.
“Can we break open the door?” Traherne answered.
“No good,” Crespin told him. “It would make a noise. We’d be interrupted, and then it would be all up.”
Traherne nodded gloomily. “Well, then,” he suggested desperately, “the next step is to try to bribe Watkins.”
“Bribe your dead grandmother’s parrot!” Crespin jibed.
And, “I don’t believe it’s a bit of good,” Lucilla objected.
“Nor I,” Traherne owned. “The fellow’s a thorough-paced scoundrel. But we might succeed, and, if we don’t even try, they’ll suspect that we’re plotting something else. If we can convince them that we’re at our wits’ end, we’ve the better chance of taking them off their guard.”
“Yes,” Lucilla urged quickly. “You see that, Antony.”
He patted her hand. “Perhaps you’re right,” he told Traherne. “But, even if the damned scoundrel can be bought, what good is it, if I can’t remember the wave-length to Amil-Serai?” He threw his wife’s hand off unconsciously as he felt again for his handkerchief, and mopped at his troubled face. But Lucilla laid her hand again on his arm.
“You’ll think of it all of a sudden,” she told him.
“Not if I keep racking my brains for it,” he groaned. “If I could get my mind off it, the damned thing might come back to me.”
“Yes,” Traherne agreed, “and that’s all the more reason for action. But first, we must settle what message to send, if we get the chance.”
“Yes—oh—yes,” Mrs. Crespin said breathlessly, and she went hurriedly to the writing-table, and flung herself into Rukh’s writing-chair. “Dictate!” she ordered. “I’ll write.” She snatched an envelope, her fingers flew to a pen. Crespin bent over her shoulder, and pulled the ink nearer her hand.
“What about this?” Traherne suggested, after a moment: “‘Major Crespin, wife, Traherne, imprisoned Rukh, Raja’s palace; lives in danger,’” he dictated slowly, while Mrs. Crespin, writing it down feverishly, waited impatiently after each word for the next.
“We want something more definite,” Crespin objected, when Traherne had finished.
Traherne considered. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “you’re right. We do.”
“How would this do?” Mrs. Crespin asked, picking up her pen again: “‘Death threatened to-morrow evening. Rescue urgent.’”
“Excellent!” Dr. Traherne exclaimed.
She wrote again, and when she held the envelope up to him, Crespin took it, and read aloud slowly, “‘Major Crespin, wife, Traherne, imprisoned, Rukh, Raja’s palace. Death threatened to-morrow evening. Rescue urgent.’ Right. I’ll keep it ready,” he said as he carefully pocketed it.
“Now,” Traherne demanded, “how to get hold of Watkins?”
Lucilla still sat in the swivel-chair—leaning back in it wearily, her eyes half closed, when she had finished writing. She roused herself now, and glanced about. “There’s a bell here,” she said suddenly, seeing it on the writing table. “Shall I try it?” and she put her hand over it.
But Traherne stopped her. “Hold on a moment,” he said quickly. “We have to decide what to do, if he won’t take money, and we have to use force in order to get his keys.”
“By Jove, yes!” Crespin agreed. “And there’s nothing here to knock him on the head with,” he added disgustedly, as he looked eagerly about the room; “not even a chair you can lift—”
“Not a curtain cord to truss him up with—” Traherne added desperately, too searching the room.
“The first thing would be to gag him, wouldn’t it?” Lucilla asked, rising. “Would this do for that?” She pulled the long, heavy silk scarf from her shoulders, and held it out.
“Capital!” Traherne said, taking it and trying its strength. “Capital.” He tied a knot in it strongly, tested it again, and carried it to the couch, and laid it on the end near the wireless-room door. “See?” he asked.
Both nodded.
“What about a billiard cue?” Crespin suggested next.
But Dr. Traherne shook his head. “If he saw it about, he’d smell a rat,” he objected.
“Then,” Major Crespin muttered grimly, “there’s only one thing—”
“What?” Traherne asked him.
Major Crespin pointed to the balcony outside the wide open window. Lucilla was standing near it.
“Oh!” she choked, and shrank away from the open window, trembling violently.
“I’m afraid it can’t be helped,” Traherne told her, saying it not too regretfully, perhaps. And he added approvingly, “There’s a drop of a good hundred feet.”
“None too much for him,” Crespin snapped between his teeth.
“When he locked that door,” Traherne reminded him, “he put the key in his trousers pocket. We must remember to get it before—” He broke off, because a woman was listening, but his eyes spoke—they spoke short shrift for Watkins, the valet.
“But,” Mrs. Crespin broke in, “if you kill him, and still don’t remember the call, we shall be no better off than we are now.”
“We shall be no worse off,” Traherne said grimly.
“Better, by Jove!” Crespin exclaimed. “For, if I can get three minutes at that instrument, the Raja can’t tell whether we have communicated or not.” He ended with a short exultant laugh, and strode to the revolving book-shelves where the glassful of liquor he’d poured out still stood. He took it up, with a sort of animal sob.
“Oh, Antony!” Lucilla cried.
Traherne held out a hand to beg her silence. The physicianknew.
“Don’t be a fool, Lu,” Crespin said roughly.
“The soda’s all flat,” she said weakly.
“The soda be damned!” Antony Crespin swore. “It’s not the soda I want. And I put damned little soda in it.”
“Antony!” she sobbed.
“Don’t be a fool, Lu,” he repeated contemptuously, and gulped down the drink, and refilled the glass with raw whiskey right up to the brim. “It’s because I am so unnaturally sober that my brain won’t work!” He drank down the raw whiskey. “God!” he cried, as he set the glass down. “Now ring that bell!” he commanded. Alcohol was doing its medicinal work—this once at least. Antony Crespin was his own man again. Valor raced through his veins. Resource tingled in nerves and brain. His eyes glittered red. Command rang in his voice. “Ring that bell, I say.”
His wife moved to the table, and obeyed him.
Dr. Traherne stood silent, looking on approvingly, admiringly too—at Crespin. And also he was diagnosing—the friend lost in the physician. Crespin had been wise in his cups for once, he thought.
“You do the talking, Traherne,” Major Crespin commanded when his wife had rung. “That fellow’s damned insolence gets on my nerves.”
“All right,” Traherne replied quietly, taking the chair by the writing-table that Mrs. Crespin had left.
Lucilla turned away and leaned her head on the mantel wearily.
“Look out—” Crespin warned them, and strolled towards the window—a red gleam in his eyes, as Watkins came in.
“You rang, sir?” Watkins said impartially to the two men; standing at the door.
“Yes, Watkins,” Dr. Traherne answered him; “we want a few words with you. Do you mind coming over here? We don’t want to speak loud.”
“There’s no one but us understands English, sir,” the valet reminded him.
“Please oblige me, all the same,” Traherne insisted.
The man did as he was asked. “Now, sir!” he said, almost standing at attention at the writing-table. And Crespin saw it, and smiled.
“I dare say you can guess what we want with you,” Traherne began.
“I’m no ’and at guessin’, sir,” Watkins said densely. “I’d rather you’d put it plain.”
“Well,” the doctor rejoined, “you know we’ve fallen into the hands of bloodthirsty savages? You know what is proposed for to-morrow?”
“I’ve ’eard as your numbers is up,” the cockney said with insolent suavity.
“You surely don’t intend to stand by and see us murdered?” Traherne looked at him hard as he spoke. “Three of your own people, and one of them a lady?”
“My own people, is it?” Watkins said with a mean, sleek smile. “And a lady—!”
But Dr. Traherne kept his temper. “A woman then, Watkins,” he amended quietly.
“What has my own people ever done for me?” the valet sneered. “Or women either—that I should lose a cushy job, and risk my neck for the sake of the three of you? I wouldn’t do it for all of your bloomin’ England, I tell you straight.”
“It’s no good, Traherne,” Major Crespin warned from the window. “Come down to tin tacks.”
“Only a sighting shot, Major,” Traherne explained. “It was just possible we might have misread our man.”
“You did,” Watkins broke in passionately, “if you took ’im for a V.C. ’ero wot ’ud lay down his life for England, ’ome and beauty. The first thing England ever done for me was to ’ave me sent to a reformatory for pinching a silver rattle off a young h’aristocrat in a p’rambulator. That, and the likes of that, is wot I’ve got to thank England for. And why did I do it? Because my mother would have bashed my face in, if I’d have come back empty-handed. That’s wot ’ome and beauty has meant for me. W’y should I care more for a woman being scragged than what I do for a man?” Foul words, foully spoken, but the passion that hissed through them was real, and so was the sense of outrage. Watkins had his reasons. Most of us have.
“Ah, yes, I quite see your point of view.” Dr. Traherne dismissed it with that. “But the question now is: What’ll you take to get us out of this?”
Watkins sniggered offensively. Men have been killed for less. “Get you out of this!” he laughed truculently. “If you was to offer me millions, ’ow could I do that?”
Traherne told him. “By going into that room and sending this message through to the Amil-Serai aerodrome,” he snapped. And Major Crespin crossed the room, and held out the message.
Watkins took it gingerly, read it through with slow ferret eyes, but an expressionless face, and laid it down deliberately on the writing-table. “So that’s the game, is it?” he commented with a shrug.
“That, as you say, is the game,” Traherne told him tersely.
“You know what you’re riskin’” Watkins asked significantly.
“What do you mean?” Traherne demanded.
“W’y,” Watkins replied, “if the Guv-nor suspected as you’d got a word through to India, ten to one he’d wipe you off the slate like that”—he snapped his loose fingers impertinently near Dr. Traherne’s face—“like that without waiting for to-morrow.”
“That makes no difference,” Major Crespin said firmly. “We’ve got to face it.”
“Come now!” Traherne argued. “On your own showing, Mr. Watkins, loyalty to your master oughtn’t to stand in your way. I don’t suppose gratitude is one of your weaknesses.”
“Gratitude! To ’im?” the man cried hotly. “What for? I’m not badly off here, to be sure, but it’s nothing to wot I does for ’im; and I ’ate ’im for ’is funny little ways. D’you think I don’t see that he’s always pulling my leg?” There was something human in Watkins, after all—and something English left in him too.
“Well, then,” Traherne said quickly, “you won’t mind selling him. We’ve only to settle the price.”
“That’s all very fine, sir,” the valet said with an unpleasant grin, “but what price ’ave you gents to offer?”
“Nothing down,” Traherne admitted, “no spot cash—that’s clear. You’ll have to take our word for whatever bargain we come to.”
“Your word!” Watkins flouted him. “How do I know—?”
“Oh, our written word,” Traherne said, quite unruffled. “We’ll give it to you in writing.”
Watkins made no reply. He was thinking it out—and he took his time. He had plenty of time. He knit his brows, and twisted his fingers.
For them—their yet lease of life to be counted, perhaps, in hours, and sick heart-beats now—waiting to know if he’d take their bait—the tension was almost too much. The woman lifted her head from the mantel, turned with her back to the fireplace, and with her hands nervously clasped, stood watching and listening. Her face was gray. Crespin crossed to beside her, and though she gave no sign, she was glad that he had. Dr. Traherne stood alert and outwardly patient. But he knew that his nerves were cracking, and his collar was cutting his neck. Crespin’s eyes were glazed with fear now, Traherne’s pinched and sharpened with it—but theirfearwas for the woman.
At last Watkins spoke. “If I was to ’elp you out,” he said very slowly, “there must be no more fairy-tales about any of you ’avin’ seen me in India.” He shuffled one foot as he said it, and a dull red light came in his shifty eyes.
“All right,” Dr. Traherne said promptly. “We accept your assurance that you never were there.”
But apparently Watkins was not satisfied yet, not ready to talk money terms. He wanted more first. If Watkins was playing a deep game with them, he was playing it skilfully, and scientifically too, the physician thought, as the valet continued:
“And see here, Dr. Traherne—you know very well I couldn’t stay here after I’d helped you to escape—least-ways, if I stayed, it’d be in my grave. You’ll ’ave to take me with you—and for that I can only have your word. Supposing you could get the message through, and the English was to come, no writing could bind you, if you chose to leave me in the lurch.”
“Quite true.” Traherne had to admit it. “I’m afraid you’ll have to trust us for that. But I give you my word of honor that we would be as careful of your safety as if you were one of ourselves—”
“Quite a ’appy family,” the man murmured insolently. But Traherne—he had himself well in hand, though it was costing him much—took no notice. “I suppose you know,” he concluded gravely, “that, strange as you may think it, there are people in the world that would rather die than break a solemn promise.”
“Even to a hound like you, Watkins,” Major Crespin added. Crespin’s patience was tattered—his fingers itched.
It was unwisely said. Traherne signaled an “Easy-all” with his eyes and brows, Lucilla laid her hand on Crespin’s.
Watkins flung round on him viciously. “I advise you to keep a civil tongue in yer ’ead, Major,” he snarled roughly. “Don’t forget that I ’ave you in the ’ollow of my ’and.”
“True, Watkins,” Traherne said quickly, “and the hollow of your hand is a very disagreeable place to be in.” He said it flatteringly—and Watkins took it so, and grinned again. “That’s why we’re willing to pay well to get out of it. Come, now, what shall we say?”
“Well, what about a little first instalment?” the cockney insinuated oilily. “You ain’t quite on your uppers, are you, now? You could come down with something, be it ever so humble?”
Dr. Traherne pulled out his pocketbook instantly, and counted his notes. “I have three hundred rupees and five ten-pound notes,” he said, laying them on the table.
Watkins sniffed. Then he turned to Crespin.
“And you, Major?” he demanded, brusquely.
Crespin already had counted his store. This was no time to haggle. He indulged his right leg, and himself, in a slight kicking motion, and then went to the table, and tossed his money down with Traherne’s. “Two hundred and fifty rupees,” he said; “oh, and some loose change.”
“Oh, never mind the chicken-feed!” Watkins said grandly. “And the lady?” he turned and eyed her as he spoke.
“I gave my last rupee to your wife, Watkins,” Mrs. Crespin replied.
Watkins nodded condescendingly. “Well,” he said consideringly, “that’s about a hundred and twenty to go on with.”
“There,” Traherne told him, placing a hand on the heap of notes, “that’s your first instalment.” Watkins eyed it haughtily. “Now, what about the balance? Shall we say a thousand pounds apiece?”
“A thousand apiece!” Watkins cried. “Three thousand pounds! You’re joking, Dr. Traherne! Wot would three thousand pounds be to me in England! W’y, I’d ’ave to take to valeting again. No, no, sir! If I’m to do this job, I must ’ave enough to make a gentleman of me.” He said it perfectly gravely. He meant it.
They stared at him in blank amazement Then, almost in unison they broke into irrepressible laughter. In peril of their lives, on terrible tenterhooks of sickening suspense, they laughed wildly—a hysterical outlet for pent-up emotions very different, it was in part, but too it was pure appreciation of the funniest thing they ever had heard. Antony Crespin shook with laughter, and swayed from side to side. Traherne tittered. The quick note of Lucilla’s mirth rang through the room like a delicate, musical bell.
Watkins was greatly offended—but too he was a little puzzled. “Well,” he said with a contemptuous scowl—no use showing too much “huff,” he reflected, for he intended to pocket that three hundred and twenty, and Crespin and Traherne were against him two to one—“you are the queerest lot as ever I come across. Your lives is ’anging by a ’air, and yet you can larf!”
“It’s your own fault, Watkins,” Lucilla Crespin gurgled, completely hysterical now. “Why will you be so funny?” A screaming note sharpened her laugh, and she broke into tears, and huddling down on the couch she buried her face on it, her body shaken with sobs.
Traherne got back to business. They were wasting too much time, he told himself sternly.
“I’m afraid what you ask is beyond our means, Watkins,” he said—careful not to say it too significantly—“But I double my bid—two thousand apiece.”
“You’ll ’ave to double it again, sir, and a little more,” Watkins said smugly. “You write me out an I.O.U. for fifteen thousand pounds, and I’ll see wot can be done.”
“Well,” Crespin blurted angrily, “you are the most consummate—”
Watkins interrupted him insolently. “If your lives ain’t worth five thousand apiece to you,” he said contemptuously, “there’s nothing doing. For my place here is worth fifteen thousand to me. And there’s all the risk too—I’m not charging you nothing for that.”
“We appreciate your generosity, Watkins,” Dr. Traherne stated. “Fifteen thousand be it!” The suspense must be cut! Time pressed hideously. Human nerves knew a limit. And after all—
“Now you’re talking,” Watkins remarked patronizingly.
With no more waste of words or of look, Basil Traherne bent over the table, and wrote and signed. He handed the I.O.U. to Watkins. Watkins scrutinized it, and threw it down on the writing-table. “That’s right, sir,” he said briskly, “but the Major must sign it too.”
Antony Crespin said something brief but terrible under his breath as he went to the writing table. But he signed it at once, not troubling to read, and threw down the pen. “There you are, damn you!” he told Watkins with a jerk of his head.
Watkins bowed.
“Now,” Traherne insisted, “get to work quick, and call up Amil-Serai—”
“Right you are, sir,” the man replied nonchalantly, and when he had pocketed the I.O.U. he strolled over to the wireless-room and began in a leisurely way to unlock the door.
“Isn’t there some special call you must send out to get Amil-Serai?” Crespin asked him.
“Oh, yes, sir, I know it,” Watkins said—his tone was respectful enough, his smile was not. He threw the folding-doors quite open, maddeningly deliberate in all he did, went in and took his seat at the wireless instrument, picked up the “receivers,” put it on his head, adjusted it, and began to tap-tap the wireless keys.
Crespin whispered to Dr. Traherne sharply: “That’s not a service call!”
But neither of them had at all confidently expected it would be, and Traherne merely nodded grimly.
There was a pause. The room ached with the silence—it was so intense—the three waiting there so wrought, so desperate, determined.
Watkins, in the wireless room, sat “listening in,” his cat-like head bent over the instruments, his face smooth and blank.
“Right!” he said suddenly. “Got them, sir. Now the message.”
He began to work the key, and as it fell at his fingers’ tips, Crespin spelt out to Traherne slowly, softly, word by word the message Watkins was sending. “‘The—white—goats—are—ready—for—’ No, but the black sheep is! Come on!”
Traherne did, almost before the two words were out. Without one shimmer of sound they moved. As they passed her, Lucilla Crespin, with a death-like, quivering face, but a hand that never trembled, held out her scarf. Traherne took it—he already held his own handkerchief ready. The woman pressed her hand to her mouth, to prison in the scream that was choking her.
Watkins wired methodically on.
Close behind him stole the two men—and death.
They swooped upon him without so much as noising the air.
Traherne jabbed the gag in. They tied the scarf—tight—mercilessly tighter—still tighter. He lurched. He tried to squirm. He was powerless—helpless. He attempted to cry—it trailed off into a strangled gurgle. That gurgle was Watkins’ death-rattle. He caught at the edge of the wireless set, clutching it so desperately that blood clotted and purpled under his well-kept finger-nails. Crespin wrenched his hands away, twisted his arms behind him, tied the wrists with his strong, silk handkerchief. They made the gag fast. They tightened it more. They pinioned him well. They pinioned him not too kindly. They swung him up in their knotted arms—Traherne’s face writhed. Crespin was smiling. He struggled desperately. ButWatkins knew. They carried him out of the wireless-room. He’d never listen-in again. He had sent his last message. He was off for the Last Orderly Room. Lucilla Crespin sobbed as they passed her, sobbed and clung to the mantelpiece. They reached the window. His head fell back, hanging from his limp neck like some hideous, distorted, unclean growth. Over the cruel, swathing gag she saw his tortured pig-like eyes strain. She turned away.
For a moment they rested on the balustrade.
“Must we—?” Traherne said huskily.
“Nothing else for it”—Crespin almost chuckled—“one, two, three!”
They lifted. They threw.
Compelled, against her will, Lucilla Crespin had followed them—stood watching, petrified. “One, two,—three!” She gave a gasping, shuddering, sick cry. “One—two—three!” Watkins, the Londoner—once of the Dorsets—had reached the Orderly Room—a mass of mangled pulp, down there in the Orderly Room, a sheer drop of a hundred feet long, he lay facing His Colonel.
They turned away from the balcony—they stumbled back into the room, Traherne like a drunken man, Crespin erect and soldierly. He crossed the room with a springy, soldier’s tread, and poured out a glass of whiskey.
“At least,” he said quietly, as he lifted it to his lips, “we haven’t taken it lying down.” He bent his mouth to the liquor—then—he put the untouched glass down with a cry of intense excitement “Hold on! Don’t speak!” They kept the silence they dared not break. His eyes flamed, and leapt “I have it!” he cried. . . . “Yes, by God, I have it! I’ve remembered the call!”
Whiskey had done its medicinal work. Alcohol had wrought its miracle. It had paid something more off the long score it owed Antony Crespin.
Dr. Traherne knew it.
“Can you lock that door?” the soldier demanded, pointing towards the corridor.
His wife ran to it breathlessly. “No key this side!” she told him hoarsely.
Traherne went to it quickly. “Don’t open it,” he whispered. “There are soldiers in the passage. I’ll hold it.” He put his back against the door—and stood rock-like before it.
Major Crespin strode to the wireless instruments, and flung himself down in the chair worn a little from the often sitting of what lay down below the balcony, in the chair still warm from the human heat of living Watkins.
Major Crespin took no thought of that. He was examining the instruments. He examined them rapidly.
“The scoundrel had reduced the current,” he exclaimed, making an adjustment with feverish haste, but steady, expert fingers. “Now the wave-length!” He still was adjusting. He caught up the receivers, and clapped them on—they too still a little warm from Watkins’ ears. Then he began to transmit, sending their desperate cry for help out into the alien spaces of air—their grand hailing cry of distress—over the Himalayas to a British-held station. Traherne at the door, alert for the slightest movement outside it, Lucilla breathless, drawn-eyed, watched him breathlessly. They were openly nervous and anxious, tormented, but Crespin worked calmly on, expert and confident, braced by the liquor he’d gulped, doubly braced and better that he was doing something, and knew that he was able to do something—something that might, by God’s own mercy, and England’s own good luck, avail them, and succor.
He ended the first sending, and sat listening in quietly, while their breath came in painful pants; Traherne’s hands knotted convulsively, the agony-lines in the woman’s face cutting its loveliness deeper, slashing furrow and sags of age on her youth.
“Do you get any answer?” Traherne whispered across the room, impatience cracking through the leash of his prudence.
“No,” Crespin replied cheerfully, over his shoulder. “No; I don’t expect any. It was scarcely worth listening-in—I’m sure they haven’t the power. But it’s an even chance that I get them all the same. I’ll repeat now—if I get the time.” Again the sure, dexterous fingers rushed over the key. Once more their life-or-death call hurtled out into the almost chartless ocean of atmosphere over the mountains of Rukh, calling, “For our blood’s sake, and the flag’s, come save us.”
“Some one’s coming up the passage!” Dr. Traherne whispered sharply. “Go on! Go on! I’llholdthe door.”
“Come and be damned!” Antony Crespin said. And the subtle fingers went gayly, carefully, very rapidly on.
Suddenly Traherne braced himself against the door, gripping its handle till his knuckles showed white and sharp through the strained, tanned skin. In another moment a sharp word of command was given outside, and the rasping sound came in of shoulders heaved against the man-held door. Traherne put all his strength, all his will, to the stand he made, but gradually the door gave to the greater strength outside, and slowly but surely three of Rukh’s guards pushed it open, and half tumbled into the room, almost thrown down by the force of their own exertion. And Traherne, drenched in his sweat—it dripped from him—was shoved by the push of the opening door, till he stood, trembling, but not untriumphant, not far from Mrs. Crespin.
Crespin went on transmitting—thought better of it—and pretended to be finding some wave-length, careful that it should not be that to Amil-Serai.
The corridor was a Babel. Hurried steps and guttural oaths, shrill questions, hot commands choked and packed it.
Rukh came in quickly—it had not taken him long to come—an inscrutable smile on his tan face, a murderous twinkle in his quickened eyes. He grasped the situation instantly—lifted his eyebrows amusedly, keenly surprised even in the moment’s imperative rush—he knew he had no time to waste—to see not Traherne but Crespin at the instruments.
“Ah!” he exclaimed lightly. “When the cat’s away—” He laughed delicately as he whipped out a revolver, and instantly fired.
He had aimed well. His eyes, wrist and fingers had been as steady and cool as quick.
“Got me, by God!” Major Crespin exclaimed with a stolid grunt, as he crumpled up, fell forward over the instrument. But he recovered himself immediately, making the last great effort of his ebbing life, its supreme effort perhaps, and, with a lightning-like rapidity, that seemed more of intense living than of dying, unmade the instruments’ adjustment. Then with a tormented laugh, a ghastly sound, he pulled himself up, groped with hands, eyes, sagging head, staggered back from the wireless set and lurched into the arms that caught him and held him, Lucilla, his wife’s, and Basil Traherne’s, while Rukh, smiling impassively, stood and watched them—and the guard, crowding the snuggery now—watched their Raja and waited his command.
They got the dying man to the couch, half dragging, half carrying him there—he could not move—and as they passed him, the Raja drew courteously back from their way.
They laid him down—very carefully. And he smiled at them as he groaned.
Traherne looked up, as he knelt holding him still, and ordered, “Brandy!”
Lucilla went to the tantalus, filled a glass, and brought it back; she held it towards Traherne, then drew it back, half-knelt, half-sat on the couch where her husband lay; and it was she who held his last glass to Antony Crespin’s gray, stiffening lips.
The Raja turned away quietly, and left them, motioning the guards back to the corridor door. He himself strolled slowly to the wireless table, saw the draft message, written in a woman’s hand, still lying there, took it up and read it.
“Antony!” the wife sobbed.
He smiled—and a man’s love lit his filming eyes. Then they sought Traherne’s. They gave each other a long, level look.
“Carry on!” Crespin said. Traherne nodded, tried to speak, choked, then mastering himself with difficulty, muttered brokenly, “Well played, sir.”
The death-rattle sounded, the hand Lucilla held was more lifeless and colder, but it gripped hers yet. “Give my love,” he whispered her, “to”—the rattle again—“the kiddies. Lu—will you”—again!—“kiss them—for me?” She nodded. She could not speak. “Lu—Lu—Lu—” his voice trailed off, and died in his rattling throat.
Rukh stood in the folding-door’s opening and held out towards Crespin the paper on which their message was written. “How much of this did you get through?” he asked in a clear, vibrant voice.
“Too late; he’ll not speak again,” Dr. Traherne thought. “You’ll get nothing from—that”—for the form they held was cold and still.
But the physician was wrong. It quivered once more—the cold thing they held—the ice-like hand clung once more to the woman’s fingers—Major Crespin raised himself a little, something very human, alive, hate and baffled defeat, gleamed through his dead eyes.
“Damn you”—he said clearly and bitterly—acknowledging defeat—“damn you—none!”
Antony Crespin had gone. His corpse slithered back in their arms.
“Antony!”
But she knew that he would not answer her again.
She drew his head to her breast—and Traherne rose, and left them together.
“All over, eh?” Rukh asked him quietly.
Dr. Traherne nodded.
A rougher noise muffled the woman’s quiet sobbing. Native soldiers burst through the corridor door, and rushed pell-mell to the Raja. One spoke to him wildly, two, not waiting the order, rushed on Traherne.
The man that had spoken, pointed to the open window. The Raja went to it calmly, and looked out over the narrow balcony, and strolled back till he stood facing Traherne but a few feet away.
“Tut, tut—most inconvenient,” he remarked languidly, not ill-naturedly. “And foolish on your part—for now, if my brothers should be reprieved, we cannot hear of it. What a pity—for you, perhaps. Otherwise—” he shrugged slightly—“the situation remains unchanged. We adhere to our program for to-morrow. The Major has only a few hours’ start of you.” And he turned on his heel, and passed out through the billiard-room, motioning something to the soldiers standing nearest Traherne.
When Lucilla Crespin looked up—it was not for some time—she was alone in the room with—her husband.
“I regret that I must offer you the services of a less well-trained ayah,” Rukh said, “but it is unavoidable. The woman who has waited on you had the bad taste to be greatly attached to her little—and, I must own, not one would think personally attractive—cockney husband. She is—just for the time being, of course—inconsolable. And her noisy grief—she’s of that irritating type—would disturb you. And too—she has learned—I regret it; but no autocrat can muzzle gossip, and such chatter flies in Rukh, and particularly fast in every palace, I think—she has learned how the inestimable, if sometimes indirect, Watkins came by his death. I could force her to attend you, but even I could not force or persuade her to do it civilly.”
Mrs. Crespin made no reply.
She sat on a wide stone bench, soft with cushions and fringed breadths of silks, in the garden that snuggled radiantly below the corridor windows—and the Raja of Rukh stood before her, his face to the palace towards which the carved bench was backed.
He had sent old Ak-kok to bring the English lady there from the snuggery, and Ak-kok had obeyed him sulkily, but had obeyed. Soldiers had gone with her to see that she did, and the old nurse had known from Rukh’s manner, even more than from his words, that in this she dare not disobey him. There were times and moods in which her prince humored and obeyed her. This was none. And when the soldiers had lifted the dead man’s body from where it lay, and carried it—not disrespectfully—away, and had indicated by unmistakable gestures that she might not follow them, Lucilla Crespin had turned listlessly and gone with Ak-kok. Why not? Nothing mattered now. There was no fret over little things left in her—the time was too short.
And so she sat on the bench to which the old Rukh woman took her, then turned and left her. And presently when they brought her food—men in the Raja’s white and gold and green liveries—and put it down near her, she ate and drank, because she wished to be strong to-morrow: strong to die quietly and proudly, if no help came, strong to live to reach her children—hers and Antony’s—if help from Amil-Serai swooped down on imprisoning Rukh. The men servants left her as soon as they’d served her, but a girl, evidently of the ayah class, stood near, as if in her service, her hands folded in her sari, her eyes, Lucilla thought, not fanatically inimical.
The Englishwoman was glad to be free of the palace walls—for a time; glad to sit here where she could not see it. She did not know that Rukh himself had moved the heavy seat so that its back was turned to the fortress-palace. And she was glad to know that all those thick walls stood impenetrable between her and what lay—it still must, she thought, the drop down had been so far and so sheer—in the gorge below the snuggery balcony. And of that too the Raja had thought.
She did not see the garden in which she sat, but perhaps some balm of its beauty and quiet stole to her and laved her.
It was of no great size, though its twisted length was not inconsiderable, for its possible fertile perch beside the high-rock-placed palace was narrow. But it lay a very beautiful ribbon of blooms and fragrant shrubs, of exquisite vistas and lilied tanks at the edge of the fortress. A moat, more ornament than of possible need or use, was cut in the other side, and over the moat and its shimmering water a bridge—not drawn now—was perhaps the most beautiful bridge in Asia—a bridge of writhing, coiling snakes, carved stone and malachite cunningly—and at what human labor!—intertwisted and twined. And beyond the moat, down on the brown rocks’ narrow perches lay the tiny dung-thatched homes of the peasants of Rukh. And the garden was pungent with hot, mingled sweetness.
The sun was setting. To-morrow at sunset! She lifted her hand to her neck and felt it curiously. At this hour to-morrow—she shuddered. Shame! she cried on herself. Englishwomen had died, suffering worse than death before they died. She was going to her death undefiled. She thanked her father’s God for that! And as she threw back her head with a little lift of English pride, she saw the hills beyond the garden. It was good to see the mountains so—the great white-topped mountains. She lifted her eyes to them hungrily, and asked that from them her help might come—help to live, help to home and babies, or help to die. Over beyond the hills, back of the great snow piles lay Pahari. Ronny and Iris were there. She’d go to them, not here in this prison-place, but out in God’s own open, she’dbewith them, she’d spend such hours as were left her now with them.
Mother-love, and the anguish-push—her will, made it an almost omnipotent thing, wrought its incalculable miracle. Shewaswith her children. She relived with them their little lives. She played with them. She folded her arms about them. She gave her breasts to their baby lips. She was not grieving now—the hours were too few—she was joying in her boy and in Iris. And her face grew younger again, and softened.
And Rukh, coming noiselessly to her, standing and watching her, unseen by her, wondered at what he saw in her altered face—youth, peace, content. He had changed again, but the clothes he wore now still were European.
Even when he spoke at last, though she turned quiet eyes up to his, she paid no heed, and he thought did not hear.
She made no attempt to go. She showed no resentment of his presence. He would have preferred either to the blank she gave—or rather the blank he found. She gave nothing.
He tried her in several ways. She made no response—gave no sign.
He bit his lip, and waited.
At last he beckoned the serving woman, and sent her away to execute a command. While she was gone he told Mrs. Crespin that he had substituted the girl’s service of her—the best he now had to offer her—for that of the woman who had attended her till now, and added his regret and his explanation.
Mrs. Crespin made no comment.
He spoke of Dr. Traherne. She made no reply.
He spoke of Antony Crespin.
She gave no sign.
But when the young ayah came back, and offered a shawl, an exquisite, delicate thing that Lucilla Crespin had not seen before, she made a slight gesture of refusal, and said, rising, “I will go to my room now, if I may.”
“Your wish is my law,” Rukh told her quietly.
She smiled faintly at that.
“One moment,” he begged as she turned.
She did not turn back, but she paused, and waited.
“You will dine—” he asked; “you—perhaps”—his voice almost was humble—“will prefer to dine alone?”
“Yes,” she said, and gesturing the ayah to show her the way, went slowly and calmly back to the palace door.
And for her proud, still courage, he maddened for her anew. He disliked while he feared and admired her people, he despised her creed—as indeed he did all creeds and beliefs, though deep in his blood something both love and reverence of the Buddha held and was quick—but he desired her fiercely as a collector desires the one rare and priceless specimen his cabinets lack. He wanted toown her, but, more than that, he longed to gain from her some personal response to the very personal feeling towards her, the kindling inclination that tingled and throbbed his being.
The sun had quite gone when he too left the garden, only the white sheen of the far, high mountains lighting it—for the stars had not come yet.
At the sound of a foot, he sprang up from the bench. It was not the fall of a native foot, he knew, and it was a woman’s tread.
She was threading her way back through the garden—the ayah stood quietly waiting at the side-door of the palace-wall. He had ordered strictly that no one should oppose the Ferenghi lady in aught, save her passing from the palace precincts, but he wondered how she had found her way back through the long, twisting palace labyrinths—no one whose tongue she knew, no one who knew hers.
She was gathering flowers—one here, one there, selecting them carefully, and when she had chosen a few, she moved quietly on until she reached him. He had thought she had not seen him, but she must have done so, for her joining of him was deliberate.
She spoke first.
“May I,” she asked quietly, “see my husband?”
“Is it necessary?” Rukh asked.
“I wish it,” she told him gently.
“Why?” he demanded. “You did not love him!”
“I did—” she said, looking him in the eyes.
It was lighter now. The first stars were hanging out their lamps of green and blue, and the moon was cresting the horizon lustily.
“How long ago?” the Raja asked.
“May I see Major Crespin?” she repeated.
“To place those flowers in his hands? They are Rukh-grown you know!”
“For his children,” she said.
“As you wish,” the Raja told her—after a pause. The Raja of Rukh was not unmoved. A warm heart beats always under the Oriental mask. Antony Crespin’s widow, there in her peril and loneliness, in his garden, the blossoms she’d filched from it in her hand, had reached it. He desired her. He intended to take her. But his manhood was stirred.
“To-night—it is growing late—or in the morning, Mrs. Crespin?” he asked her softly.
“Now,” she replied.
“As you wish,” he repeated.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Crespin told him.
But for his turban, he still wore European clothes. But his inseparable silver whistle hung at the coat of his gray lounge suit. He lifted the whistle. But she stayed him a moment, and said, “Will you tell me—what—will be done—with Major Crespin’s body?”
“I had not thought of that yet,” Rukh asserted. It was true. “But no disrespect shall be shown to what the flowers you have gathered protects.”
“May my husband’s body be burned?” she asked.
“You prefer it—to burial?”
“Much.”
Rukh’s dark eyes darkened. She preferred it to burial here in Rukh, he knew. But after an instant’s hesitation, he said quietly: “It shall be done. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” she said again, “I will go to him now.”
The Raja bowed, and lifted the silver whistle. Its long note pierced sharp and sweet through the evening.
“They will attend you,” he said when he’d given the soldiers who’d come a crisp order. And she turned and went with the men, the young ayah close behind her as they entered the door in the palace wall.
Rukh made no attempt to follow.
He stood and watched her. And when she had gone, he went a few steps, bent, and took up a flower she had dropped, and he drew its stem through the buttonhole of his gray lounge coat. It was a pale pink tea-rose, and its scent was strong and sweet.