CHAPTER XXXVI
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.