Contact, and Other Stories

by Frances Noyes Hart

With a last touch on her hair, light and caressing as his voice, he was gone through the darkness. He pulled the door to behind him noiselessly, and stood leaning against it for a moment with bowed head, listening. Silence—a faint patter of feet—the heavy grating of the bolt driven home. He raised his head.

“Good girl!” said the Honourable Tony clearly.

He swung across to the table, felt for the matches, and lit the lamp deftly and swiftly, pulling the long chair into its friendly aura and distributing the cushions with a rapid dexterity that belied the lethargy that he had maintained tigers incapable of disturbing. But then, a little wind had just passed through the quiet room—a little wind that blew in heavy with darkness and fragrance and something else—heavy with a distant murmur of voices, and far-off footsteps coming nearer through the night. It passed as it came, but the flame in the lamp flickered and burned brighter, and the flame that danced in the eyes of the gentleman reclining in the long chair flickered and burned brighter, too, though they were discreetly lowered over the account of a highly unsavory Bazaar murder in a two-month-old paper from Singapore. Even when the footsteps were on the rickety stairs he continued to read; even when they were on the threshold he only bent his head a little lower, intent and absorbed; even when the knocks rang out, ominous and insistent, he did not lift those dancing eyes. He flipped over the first page of the Singapore paper with a dexterous thumb and finger, and lifted his voice in welcome leavened with surprise.

“Come in!” called the Honourable Tony to those who stood in darkness. And the door opened and they came in.

First there came a small, plump, swarthy gentleman in immaculate white linen of an irreproachable cut. He had small neat feet shod in the shiniest of patent-leather boots, and small fat hands adorned with three superb emeralds, and a set of highly unpleasant little cat whiskers curling into a grizzled gray at the ends. About his throat was a scarlet watered ribbon from which dangled a star as glittering as a Christmas tree ornament, and about his head was wound a turban of very fine red silk pierced by a brooch in which crouched another emerald large as a pigeon egg, flawed and sinister and magnificent. In one fat little hand he held a pair of white kid gloves and a small handkerchief badly crumpled; in the other a swagger stick of ebony banded with smooth gold. He walked on the tips of his patent-leather toes, and behind him came ten gigantic figures in incredible green uniforms with gold-laced jackets that were debtors to the Zouaves, and fantastic caps strapped under their chins reminiscent of the organ-grinder’s monkey and the dancing vaudeville bellboy. Lanterns light as bubbles swung from their great paws and in the gilded holsters at their waists the mother-of-pearl handles of the famous automatics gleamed like the Milky Way. They padded behind their master, silent as huge cats, and smiled at one another like delighted children. His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan Bhakdi, accompanied by the Royal Body Guard, was making a call on the British Adviser.

The British Adviser rose easily to his feet.

“Your Majesty!” he saluted, with precisely the correct inflection of gratified amazement.

“Excellency!” His Majesty’s accent was a trifle more British than the Honourable Tony’s, but he purred in his throat, which is not done. “We were alarmed by the good Ghundi’s report of your health. You suffer?”

“Oh, Ghundi’s overdone it!” protested the Honourable Tony, all courteous regret, but the carved dimples danced. “I’m no end sorry that you’ve had all this bother. It’s frightfully decent of you to give it a thought; nothing in the world the matter but a rather stiff nip of fever. I was going to turn in in another minute, and sleep it off. I beg any number of pardons for this costume; it’s hardly one that I’d have chosen for such an honour.”

“Hardly!” agreed the Sultan cordially. “Hardly! However, as the visit was unheralded, and as the defects of the costume may be so easily remedied, we dismiss it gladly. Come, we waive formality; we have been bored most damnably without you and the excellent bridge. The mountain comes to Mahomet; my good Mahomet, on with your boots, on with your coat, and out with your cards. We will drive off this pestilential fever with three good rubbers and four good drinks. Ahmet will fetch your coat. It is in your room? Ahmet!”