"I hope I'll see you before I leave," she said in a way that would have made it impossible for him to misunderstand, had he been inclined to do so. "Good night."
He watched her go.... And when he reached his room and examined the silk-wrapped papers Li Kwai Kung had given him, she persisted in cleaving through his thoughts, in appearing from the pages before him and distracting him; and after a few minutes he re-wrapped the packet and placed it in his trunk.
Long after he plunged the room into darkness he lay thinking—thinking of Kerth in Bombay, of his Excellency Li Kwai Kung sitting in his shadowy room, like a yellow-bellied spider, and of the Order of the Falcon. The Manchester was to sail Saturday; it was Thursday now. Two days, an interlude; then the Bay, Rangoon and—
But would he see her before he left?
4
Morning and a hint of coolness caressing the air. Sampans and other craft rocked and crooned in the murky Hoogly. Gauzy streamers of smoke floated over the jute-mills of Howrah. Sunshine drenched the modern buildings of Dalhousie Square and Government Row; submerged the myriad bazaars and shops in yellow liquor; crept into the room where Trent was sleeping and aroused him with an impelling finger.
He dressed and went to breakfast. When he left the dining-hall his attention was arrested by a black straw hat with a sheaf of cornflowers and ripe yellow wheat about the crown. A tendril of hair glowed against the somber brim. She was talking with a native, an itinerant merchant; a string of beads hung from her white fingers. Trent approached from behind and spoke.
"He's asking entirely too much for those stones, Miss Charteris."
She turned, smiling. He felt the same warmth in her brown eyes as on the previous night.
"You always appear at the psychological moment—or rather," she interpolated, "this time at the financial moment."