'You had better open the shutter, baboo,' said Jack Raymond; 'and go on, not exactly as if I wasn't here--that mightn't be safe under the circumstances--but as if you were thinking of your pension.'
'Yes, sir,' bleated the baboo, 'I will do best endeavours to please.'
So silence fell again, to be broken by another step outside; clearly an English step, making the listener at the table look up as the steps died away.
'Here, baboo! send this off quick!' came an English voice; and Jack Raymond had hard work not to look round.
But the wire was only to lay odds on a race in Calcutta; and even the strain of listening for each unknown letter did not come to Lesley, for the baboo showed the adaptability of his kind, by reading out the words loudly and saying, 'Is that right, sir?' to the sender.
'I hope so, baboo!' said the English boy with a laugh, 'or I shall be stony broke!' So the steps died away once more.
'Only twenty minutes left!' remarked Jack Raymond as silence fell again; but not for long. The first voice came back--this time to the shutter--full of reproaches; and the frantic anxiety of the baboo to keep the conversation within bounds, and prevent anything absolutely incriminating from cropping up, made one listener smile as he sat pretending to copy way-bills into a ledger. And when the voice passed on, and he turned to look, he laughed outright to see the wretched creature mopping the perspiration off his forehead.
'Had about enough?' he began, then paused, for an imperative 'kling kling' rang out from the electric bell.
'Asking if the line is clear,' said Lesley from her post, and Jack Raymond rose and stretched himself.
'Then that's over! The train has reached Bahâna, and we can go--and--and face the rest!' He held out his hand to help her to rise.