“Have you not forgotten him yet?” Victor enquired in simulated surprise. “Have you neglected to remark that since the blunderer failed to find the Council Chamber that night, when his raid at the Red Moon netted him only a handful of coolie gamblers and drug-addicts, he has left us to our own devices?”
“That’s what makes me wonder what the divvle’s up to. His sort are never so dangerous as when apparently discouraged.” “Be reassured. I promised you three weeks ago his interference would not continue beyond that night. It has not. Lanyard knows I have his daughter, that any blow aimed at me must first strike her.”
“Doubtless yourself knows best....”
With the Irishman gone, Prince Victor turned to Sturm.
“You will want a good night’s sleep,” he suggested with pointed solicitude. “Who knows but that to-morrow will bring your night of nights, my friend?”
He lapsed immediately into remote abstraction, sitting with chin bent to the tips of his joined fingers, his eyes downcast, motionless.
Disgruntled, but afraid to show it, the German cleared away the litter of papers, assorting them into huge portfolios, and took himself off. Shaik Tsin replaced him, moving noiselessly about the room, restoring the reference books to the shelves and stowing the portfolios away in a massive safe hidden behind a lacquered screen. This done, he stationed himself before his master, awaiting his attention, a shape of affable placidity, intelligent, at ease; his attitude not entirely lacking a suggestion of familiarity.
Without changing his pose by so much as the lifting of an eyelash, Victor spoke in Chinese:
“To-morrow afternoon, late, I shall motor down into the country with the girl Sofia. I shall be gone three days—perhaps. I will leave a telephone number with you, to be used only in emergency. As soon as I have left, you will dismiss all the English servants, with a quarter’s wage in advance in lieu of notice. Karslake will provide the money.”
“He does not accompany you?”