CHAPTER XXXI
Watkins opened the door of the Raja’s snuggery, and withdrew as he ushered Crespin in, and Crespin came in sulkily enough. He looked about him quickly and apprehensively and finding himself quite alone, began wandering about aimlessly, nervous and irritable.
It was an uncommonly pleasant room—entirely European and modern, its comfort contrasting greatly with the old-fashioned and somewhat comfortless splendor of the great salon in which the Raja had entertained and mocked and sentenced them the night before. Everything was in exquisite order—the silver fittings on the fine writing table, the flowers in a vase and bowl or two—not too many—the papers and books, the pipes in their rack, and there was only one clock.
This room was high up in the great bastioned building; standing at the great open window, one seemed to be level with the distant high mountain peaks still rosy over their snow, across the narrow valley where sheep and goats, mere specks so far below, were browsing, and white, humped bullocks.
Crespin paid no respects to the scenery spread before him. The Alps could boast nothing to match this, but nothing in nature could appeal to Antony Crespin now. How could it? He grunted disconsolately. Then he stared at the doors, and counted them moodily. The doors appealed to him, if the scenic beauty did not. Doors whispered of escape. He tiptoed heavily to the large folding door that half filled one wall. He tapped it softly but carefully, with speculative, anxious fingers. It felt a particularly solid and formidable door. Very cautiously he tried it. It was locked. With another unhappy grunt he turned back, and roamed aimlessly about the room.
“What a hell of a lot of books,” he muttered disgustedly, “nothing but books. His Nibs must be a what-you-may-call-it, or want one to think he is.” And the cozy, homelike snuggery was very full of books. Low bookcases lined all the walls, wherever there was available space for them; they were filled with serious looking modern books, but Major Crespin did not investigate that. On the top of one bookcase stood a large beautifully executed bust of Napoleon—which the English Major recognized. Over another, facing the writing-table, hung an admirable black and white portrait of Nietzsche—which he did not recognize. A few good sporting prints—Leach at his best—caught his eye, and would have held and delighted him at a more normal time. There was not a small chair in the place; all were roomy and inviting and luxuriously padded, most of them covered in green morocco to match the great luxurious couch. Crespin twirled the revolving bookcase, that stood to hand by the writing-table, about, and frowned viciously at its contents: the Britannica and lesser but erudite books of reference.
But a tantalus with attendant syphon and glasses attracted his notice next. “Hello! Good-morning,” he told it. He hesitated unhappily a moment or two, looked over his shoulder stealthily, miserably; looked back at the whiskey-filled tantalus, and poured himself out a stiff peg. He held his glass up to the light, looking at it thirstily, gloatingly, put it down, and shuffled about the room once more. He bit his lip, looked back at the liquor, looked away from it quickly, and moved resolutely to another closed door. It opened readily. Crespin peeped into the inner room, and closed the door again, muttering, “Billiards, begad!” Back to the writing table he fingered its silver. He picked up a vase, and snuffed at its flowers. He took up a paper. It proved to be La Vie Parisienne, and he threw it down with an insular and characteristic comment: “French muck!” Another paper lying on the couch caught his eye next. He went and got it—anything to keep his eyes and his fingers away from the tumbler in which the soda was going flat. This turned out to be printed in Russian. “My hat!” was his disgusted comment as he flung it down.
He hurried back to the revolving bookcase with the Encyclopedia, Roget’s “Thesaurus” and “Who’s Who” on its shelves, and cutglass and alcohol, alleviation and temptation, on its top, seized the tumbler he’d filled to the brim—the soda was dead, but that didn’t matter, he’d not put much soda in it. His lips were twitching a little as he lifted to them the stimulant they craved. All his being craved it—needed it perhaps. On the point of drinking, the rim to his mouth, Antony Crespin hesitated again, shuddered a little, and hurried to the open window. “No,” the man muttered, and pitched the liquid out of the casement. Antony Crespin, after a border “shindy,” had been decorated and mentioned in despatches, for less than that. His face had paled when he put the glass back in its place. As he was doing it Traherne came into the room.
“There!” Crespin sniggered weakly, “you think you’ve caught me!”
“Caught you?”
“Lushing,” Crespin persisted. “But I haven’t been. I threw the stuff out of the window. God knows I wanted it, but for Lucilla’s sake, I must keep all my wits about me.” His voice cracked as he spoke, and at that, and the illness in his eyes, Traherne watching him wondered if he ought not to prescribe it. But instead he said cheerfully, “Yes, if we can all do that, we may pull through yet.”
“Did you sleep?” Crespin asked.
“Not a wink. And you?”
“Dozed and woke again fifteen times in a minute,” Crespin told him. “A hellish night.”
“Have you any news of Mrs. Crespin?”
Crespin nodded. “But only this. She sent me this chit.” He pulled the scrap of note-paper from his pocket, and offered it to Traherne.
Traherne took it, and read it slowly aloud. “‘Have slept and am feeling better. Keep the flag flying.’ What pluck she has!” he exclaimed as he handed it back.
“Yes,” Crespin said gravely, “she’s game—always was.”
“She reminds me,” the other told him, “of the women in the French Revolution. We might all be in the Conciergerie, waiting to hear the tumbrils.”
“It would be more endurable if we were,” Major Crespin muttered huskily—“were in prison. It’s this appearance of freedom—the scoundrel’s damned airs of politeness and hospitality—that makes the thing such a nightmare.” Mechanically he took up the tantalus again, and quite mechanically mixed himself another whiskey and soda. “Do you believe we’re really awake, Traherne? If I were alone, I’d think the whole thing a nightmare; but you and Lucilla seem to be dreaming it too.” His voice husked again as he said it, and he raised the glass quickly. But again he remembered when it was just at his lips, and crashed the glass down. “Damn it!” The cut glass was thick, and it did not break.
“Some day,” Dr. Traherne said wistfully, “we may look back upon it as on a bad dream.”
Crespin shook his head moodily. “He does you well, curse him,” he cried. “They served me a most dainty chota hazri this morning, and with it a glass of rare old fine champagne.”
“Yes,” Traherne commented, “the Orientals know how to refine cruelty to the nth degree, when they choose. Where does that door lead?” he asked, pointing.
“To a billiard-room. Billiards!” Crespin laughed—and at the laugh’s quality the physician looked at him anxiously.
“And this one?” he went on, in a moment, again pointing.
Crespin shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s locked—and a very solid door, too.”
“Do you know what I think?” Traherne drew a step nearer, and spoke low.
“Yes,” Crespin replied instantly; “and I agree with you.”
“Opening off the fellow’s own sanctum,” Traherne went on.
Crespin nodded. “It’s probably the wireless room,” he said still lower.
They stood and looked at each other, steadily, significantly—saying nothing. There was no need.
“And what’s out here?” Traherne was pointing to the window.
“Take a look,” Crespin told him tersely.
Traherne crossed the room, and leaned over the window’s sill. He whistled. “A sheer drop of a hundred feet,” he pronounced slowly.
“And a dry torrent below,” Major Crespin added insinuatingly. “How if we were to pick up our host, Traherne, and gently drop him on those razor-edged rocks?”
Traherne’s eyes glittered hungrily, but he shrugged his shoulders discouragingly, and said, “As he remarked last night, they’d tear us to pieces the quicker.”
“If it weren’t for Lucilla, I’m damned if I wouldn’t do it all the same,” Major Crespin muttered.
Again they stood and stared into each other’s faces—sharing a thought, baffled, at bay, but not “all in” yet, not defeated yet.