CHAPTER XXXV
The billiard balls clicked again.
They had not interrupted their game for her, then.
He had sat down at his writing-table when Mrs. Crespin had left him, and now he drew a pad to him, and picked up the pencil again. He began to write; he had found the words he wanted.
“Watkins!” he called, not loudly.
“Yessir?” Watkins had come at once.
The Raja tore the sheet off the pad, and handed it to him.
The valet read it aloud softly. He always read aloud to his master any message he was to transmit, to assure reading and sending it correctly. He read, “‘The lady has come to terms. She will enter His Highness’s household.’ Quite so, sir,” the man said. “What suite will she occupy?”
“My innocent Watkins!” Rukh said twittingly. “Do you think it’s true? What have I to do with an unapproachable English woman? It’s only a bait for the Feringhis. You shall send it out in their hearing, and if either of them can read the Morse code, the devil’s in it if he doesn’t give himself away.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” Watkins said, with an appreciative grin. “I didn’t quite catch on.”
“If they move an eyelash I’ll take care they never see the inside of this room again,” Rukh asserted. Watkins made no comment; he did not doubt it.
“Am I to send this to India, sir?” he asked.
“To anywhere or nowhere,” Rukh told him cheerfully. “Reduce the current, so that no one can pick it up. So long as it’s heard in this room, that’s all I want.”
“But when am I to send it, sir?” the man inquired not unreasonably.
“Listen,” the Raja ordered. “I’ll get them in here on the pretext of a little wireless demonstration, and then I’ll tell you to send out an order to Tashkent for champagne. That’ll be your cue. Go ahead—and send slowly.”
“Shall I ask whether I’m to code it, sir?” Watkins was taking every precaution to do exactly as the Raja wished. It always was wisest—and safest also—to do that. But too the man was entering into the spirit of it now. He liked his job.
“You may as well,” Rukh assented. “It’ll give artistic finish to the thing.”
“Very good, Your ’Ighness. But,” he had more to ask, more to provide himself with precautions for, “afterwards, if, as you was saying, they was to try to corrupt me, sir—”
“Corrupt you?” The Raja held up a hand in horror. “That would be painting the lily with a vengeance.”
Watkins was incensed. Even a cockney blackleg has his sensitiveness—but he did not dare show it, and only a touch of annoyance crept into his voice, as he questioned again, “Suppose they tries to get at me, sir—what are your instructions?”
“How do you mean?” The Raja understood perfectly what Watkins meant, but it often pleased him—it did now—to put the cockney to the trouble of putting things into words very plainly.
“Shall I let on to take the bait?” the valet explained.
“You may do exactly as you please,” the master told him indifferently. “I have the most implicit confidence in you, Watkins.”
“You are very good, sir,” Watkins tried not to say it sulkily.
The Raja smiled. “I know that anything they can offer you would have to be paid either in England or in India, and that you daren’t show your nose in either country,” he remarked grimly. “You have a very comfortable job here—”
“My grateful thanks to you, sir,” the man said humbly.
“And you don’t want to give the hangman a job, either in Lahore or in London.”
“The case in a nutshell, sir,” Watkins said cheerfully. “But I thought if I was to pretend to send a message for them, it might keep them quiet-like.”
“Very true, Watkins,” the Raja approved. “It would not only keep them quiet, but the illusion of security would raise their spirits, which would be a humane action. I am always on the side of humanity.”
“Just so, sir,” the other replied dryly. “Then I’ll humor them.”
“Yes if they want to send a message,” Rukh agreed. “If they try to ‘get at,’ not only you, but the instrument, call the guard,” he stipulated, “and let me know at once.”
“Certainly, sir,” Watkins grinned.
“Now,” Rukh added briskly, “open the door and standby. You have the message?”
Watkins drew the slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket, and began to read it aloud, “‘The lady has come to terms. She’—”
“Yes, that’s right,” Rukh cut him off sharply. “Oh, look here,” he added, as the man was opening the folding door, “when you’ve finished, you’d better lock the door again, and say, ‘Any orders, sir?’ If I say, ‘No orders, Watkins,’ it’ll mean I’m satisfied they don’t understand. If I think they do understand, I’ll give you what orders I think necessary.”
“Very good, sir,” the punctilious valet replied, as he softly threw back the folding doors that divided Rukh’s snuggery and the wireless-room: a small, plain, business-like, office-looking place—the operator’s seat in front of the apparatus of incredibly many instruments—and that was all—except an electric light in the ceiling, not lit now, of course. Not a wire showed on floor or wall—although all of “wireless” is done by means of wires!
The Raja rose and went to the door of the billiard-room, and when he had opened it said, “Oh, Major, you were saying you had no experience of wireless. If you’ve finished your game, it might amuse you to see it at work. Watkins is just going to send out a message. Would Mrs. Crespin care to come?”
“Yes,” Crespin answered, coming into the snuggery, “why not? Will you come, Lucilla?” he called over his shoulder.
She and Traherne followed Crespin in, not very eagerly—all three wearily polite, but scarcely interested, unless their faces and walk belied them. Rukh eyed them closely, with eyes so agile that he managed to watch all three of them at once. They had no chance to exchange one covert glance, had they cared to—but they were playing their own hands too carefully and well for that—and they understood each other too thoroughly to need to do so. They looked a little bored. And they looked shockingly tired. The bright day was near its high zenith now, and in its searching light they looked to Rukh to have aged perceptibly in the short time they had been in the billiard-room. He didn’t wonder at it.
“This,” he told them, pointing, “you see, is the apparatus. All ready, Watkins? Won’t you sit down?” He gave Mrs. Crespin a chair, and indicated others to the men. “You have the order for Tashkent, Watkins?”
“Yes, Your ’Ighness,” the valet said, producing the slip with the fake message on it, “but I haven’t coded it.”
“Oh, never mind,” Rukh ordered impatiently. “Send it in clear. Even if some outsider does pick it up, I daresay we can order three cases of champagne without causing international complications.”
Watkins put on his receivers, and sat down at the wireless set, with its many instruments in front of him, tapped the key, made an adjustment, and sat “listening in”—and waited.
“He’s waiting for the reply signal,” the Raja explained.
“Oh!” Crespin rejoined blankly. “May I take one of your excellent cigars, Raja?” he added with a better show of interest.
“By all means,” Rukh told him. He watched Crespin’s face and his hands as the Major lit the cigar. He credited both Traherne and Mrs. Crespin with enough finesse to cloak their thoughts and their emotions bafflingly well, but he made very sure of trapping the Major’s thoughts and emotions as they came. If Major Crespin knew anything at all of the wireless, Rukh made very sure that he would betray it, “chuck it” at him almost.
“I’ve got them,” Watkins announced after a suitable pause, and proceeded to send his message, slowly, very clearly: “The lady has come to terms,” the Morse code spelled very deliberately. Dr. Traherne and Mrs. Crespin understood none of it; Antony Crespin read it as if it had been large, clear print.
“May we speak?” he said in a low voice, bending a little towards Rukh.
“Oh, yes,” the Raja laughed; “you won’t be heard in Tashkent.”
“She will enter,” the valet’s fingers, and the disks on the wireless keyboard, spelled out carefully.
Crespin pulled his cigarette case out—what a stupid-looking face this Englishman had, the Raja thought. And he understood nothing of what the transmitter was saying—that was indubitable.
“His Highness’s household.”
Crespin held out the case to the doctor. “Have a cigarette, Traherne?”
“Thanks.” Traherne took one. Major Crespin struck a match—Watkins was repeating the message—Crespin held the match, saying, “Let us smoke and drink, for to-morrow we—” and he blew out the match, for the cigarette drew now. And the re-transmission ended.
“That’s how it’s done!” Rukh announced.
“How many words did he send?” Traherne inquired, with a show of interest that palpably was a little forced.
“What was it, Watkins?” the Raja demanded. “‘Forward by to-morrow’s caravan twelve cases champagne. Usual brand. Charge our account’—was that it?”
“That’s right, sir,” the man answered as he turned from the apparatus.
“Twelve words.” Rukh told Traherne, checking his count on his fingers.
“And can they really make sense out of those fireworks?” Crespin demanded a little rudely, and almost incredulously. Your Englishman always is incredulous of what he does not understand.
“I hope so—else we shall run short of champagne,” the Raja said with a laugh.
Traherne, blowing smoke-rings skilfully, knew that Rukh lied. A “show” run on such lines as this was would not get within but a few days’ supply of champagne. Dr. Traherne had understood nothing of what the keys had clicked out, but he was sure that it was something very different from what the Raja had translated—if it had been anything at all, or had gone anywhere. Dr. Traherne understood Rukh better than Rukh understood Crespin.
Watkins came into the snuggery, locked the folding door carefully, tried it, pocketed his key-ring, and turned to his master. “Any orders, Your ’Ighness?” he asked.
“No orders, Watkins,” the Raja told him lazily.
Major Antony Crespin had scored a point.