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 says _au 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 physician _knew_.
“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 their _fear_ was 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.