CHAPTER XXVIII
The great wings beat nearer. The cruel bird-cry came again.
“You would kill us—?” Lucilla panted hoarsely.
“Not I, Madam; the clerical party,” Rukh said suavely. “And only if my brothers are executed. If not, I will merely demand your word of honor that what has passed between us shall never be mentioned to any human soul—and you shall go free.”
“But,” Major Crespin exclaimed, “if your brother assassins are hanged—as assuredly they will be—you will put us to death in cold blood!”
“Oh, not in cold blood, Major,” the Raja interjected, the edge of a laugh on his smooth, level voice. “There is nothing cold-blooded about the clerical party when ‘white goats,’ as their phrase goes, are to be sacrificed to the Goddess.”
“Does your Goddess demand the life of a woman?” Traherne asked it sternly, and his eyes were scalpels.
“Well,” the Raja of Rukh said with slow significance, “on that point she might not be too exacting. ‘On trouve avec le Ciel des accommodements.’ If Madam would be so gracious as to favor me with her—society—”
Lucilla Crespin gazed at him speechless, for a moment, then realized fully his meaning, and sprang up with a cry of rage and anger.
The Raja smiled.
“Scoundrel!” Traherne hurled the word at him.
The Raja smiled.
Crespin sprang to the side of his wife, threw one hand on her quivering shoulders, drew and leveled his revolver. “Another word, and I shoot you like a dog,” he hissed. Antony Crespin was sober now.
The Raja laughed.
“Oh, no, Major—that wouldn’t help a bit,” he said genially—almost, too, as if he deprecated the fact. “You would only be torn to pieces instead of being beheaded. Besides, I have had your teeth drawn. That precaution was taken while you were at your bath.”
Crespin took his hand from Lucilla’s shoulder, and examined his revolver carefully and flung it down with an oath.
Again the gong sounded. It bleated through the night mournfully. A girl had died in child-bed. Rukh counted the strokes. “That’s a pity,” he said as the last faded away, and he lit a fresh cigarette.
The Englishwoman turned to her men. “Promise me,” she said almost fiercely, “promise you won’t leave me alone! If we must die, let me die first—” and her voice broke on the words.
They nodded. Neither could speak.
But the Raja spoke. “The order of the ceremony, Madam,” he said with courteous, princely insolence, “will not be at these gentlemen’s choice.” She hid her face in her hands, and stood cowering in distraught despair. “But do not be alarmed. No constraint shall be put upon your inclinations. Dr. Traherne reproached me with lack of consideration for your sex, and I then hinted, if you so pleased, your sex should meet with every consideration. I gather that you do not so please? Well, I scarcely hoped you would—I do not press the point. None the less, the suggestion remains open. And now, I’m afraid I’ve been talking a great deal. You must be fatigued,” he added solicitously.
At that moment the major-domo stood at a door, holding a salver with a slip of paper folded on it. The Raja gestured him nearer, advanced to meet him, and took up the paper, and scanned it thoughtfully. But his face did not change.
“Ah, this is interesting!” he told them. “If you will wait a few minutes, I may have some news for you. Excuse me.” He bowed as he left them, and the old major-domo followed him from the room.
The clocks ticked almost a minute away.
They stayed as if frozen, where he had left them, and gazed at each other in speechless horror. The men thought that they heard the woman’s heart beat.
“And we were saved this morning—only for this!” Lucilla sobbed brokenly at last.
“Courage!” Traherne said, with his soul in his eyes, his heart in his voice. “There must be some way out.”
“The whole thing’s a damned piece of bluff!” Crespin cried with a gust of hysterical laughter. “And the scoundrel almost took me in.”
Bluff! They looked at him in pitying amazement. They both pitied him then. And they knew it was no bluff.
Lucilla caught suddenly at her throat, catching her locket convulsively in her icy fingers. “Oh,” she sobbed, stumbling down on to the big ottoman in a passion of grief, “my babies! Oh, my babies! Never to see them again!” Crespin’s face twisted. “To leave them all alone in the world! My Ronny! My little Iris! What can we do? Antony! Dr. Traherne! Think of something—something—”
Crespin sat down beside her, and took her hands in his. And she did not repulse him now. He was their father. She forgot his cups, that had shamed her, forgot the infidelities that had stung and infuriated her womanhood and pride. In this unspeakable peril he was her husband again. And she turned to him with an agony of entreaty in her terrified eyes.
“Yes, yes, Lu,” he said tenderly, “we’ll think of something—”
“There’s that fellow Watkins,” Traherne suggested desperately; “we might bribe him—”
“Oh,” Lucilla gasped, “offer him every penny we have in the world!”
“I’m afraid he’s a malicious scoundrel,” Traherne reflected aloud, dismally. “He must have known what was hanging over our heads, and, looking back, I seem to see him gloating over it.”
“But, he is English,” Lucilla said fiercely.
“Yes,” Traherne said dully, “he is English.”
“And a damneder cur than the ‘master’ whose feet he washes, if you ask me,” Crespin muttered gloomily.
“Still—still—” his wife persisted, “perhaps he can be bought. Antony! Think of the children! Oh, do let us try!”
“But even if he would,” Crespin told her gently, “he couldn’t guide us through the woods.”
“Oh,” she answered passionately, “he could hire some one else!”
“I don’t believe,” Traherne said thoughtfully, “we can possibly be so far from the frontier as he makes out.”
“How far did he say?” Lucilla exclaimed eagerly.
“Three weeks’ journey,” Traherne told her. “Yet they know all about things that happened less than a week ago.”
Crespin bent down, and picked up thoughtfully the revolver he’d thrown down in his rage. At least it would serve to brain one native, he reflected.
As he slipped it back in his belt, all the electric lights in the room went down suddenly, and as they did, a hissing and chittering sound buzzed faintly out unmistakably somewhere beyond the room.
“What is that?” Lucilla whispered, startled. “What an odd sound!”
“God!” Antony Crespin muttered hoarsely—a strange, eager look on his face.
“Major! Do you hear that!” Traherne cried.
“Do I hear it?” Crespin echoed exultantly. “I should say so!” and he sprang to his feet, listening, his head thrown back, his eyes glowing, and fixed on the ceiling.
“Wireless!” Traherne exclaimed.
“Wireless, by Jupiter!” Crespin swayed in his intense excitement—his voice danced.
“They’re sending out a message!”
“That accounts for it,” Traherne said.
“They’re in wireless communication with India!”
“Fools, not to have thought of it,” Crespin muttered. “He would be!”
“Antony knows all about wireless,” Lucilla panted, speaking to Traherne.
“Ought to!” the Major said grimly. “I should rather think so! Wasn’t it my job all through the War! If I could hear more distinctly now—and if they’re transmitting it clearly—I could read their message.”
“That may be our salvation!” Traherne said in a low, strained voice.