"Let us say three-thirty," Jaimihr answered. "You will be waiting for me at the Hotel Splendide with—our friends there. I shall come to you there, give you the combination, and you shall go through the lines to the signal tower."
"There must be no slip," Woodhouse sternly warned.
"Not on my part, Cap-tain—count on that. For five years I have been waiting—waiting. Five years a servant—yes, my General; no, my General; very good, my General." The man's voice vibrated with hate. "To-morrow, near dawn—the English fleet shattered and ablaze in the harbor—the water red, like blood, with the flames. Then, by the breath of Allah, my service ends!"
Voices sounded in the hallway outside the double doors. Jaimihr Khan, a finger to his lips, nodded as he whispered: "Three-thirty, at the Splendide." He faded like a white wraith through the door to General Crandall's room as the double doors opened and the masculine faction of the dinner party entered. Woodhouse rose from a stooping position at the telephone and faced them. To the general, whose sharp scrutiny stabbed like thin knives, he made plausible explanation. The beggar who lost his bag wanted a complete identification of it—had run it down at Algeciras.
"I understand," Crandall grunted.
When the cigars were lit, General Crandall excused himself for a minute, sat at his desk, and hurriedly scratched a note. Summoning Jaimihr, he ordered that the note be despatched by orderly direct to Major Bishop and given to no other hands. Woodhouse, who overheard his superior officer's command, was filled with vague apprehension. What Mrs. Sherman had said at table—this hurried note to Bishop; there was but one interpretation to give to the affair—Crandall's suspicions were all alive again. Yet at three-thirty—at the Hotel Splendide——
But when Crandall came back to join the circle of smokers, he was all geniality. The women came in by way of Jane Gerson's room; they had been taking a farewell peek at her dazzling stock of gowns, they said, before they were packed for the steamer.
"There was one or two I just had to see again," Mrs. Sherman explained for the benefit of all, "before I said good-by to them. One of them, by Madam Paquin, father, I'm going to copy when we get home. I'll be the first to introduce a Paquin into little Kewanee."
"Well, don't get into trouble with the minister, mother," Henry J. warned. "Some of the French gowns I've seen on this trip certainly would stir things up in Kewanee."
Jaimihr served the coffee. Woodhouse tried to maneuver Jane into a tête-à-tête in an angle of the massive fireplace, but she outgeneraled him, and the observant Mrs. Sherman cornered him inexorably.