“Deo volente? You are a religious man, Nogam?”
“I ’umbly ’ope so, sir, and do my best to be, accordin’ to my lights.”
“Glad to hear it. Now cut along, or you’ll miss the up train.”
Long after Nogam had left the memory of their talk continued to afford Victor an infinite amount of private entertainment.
“A religious man!” he would jeer to himself. “Then—may your God help you, Nogam!”
Some thought of the same sort may well have troubled Nogam’s mind as he sat in an otherwise untenanted third-class compartment blinking owlishly over the example of Victor’s command of the intricacies of Chinese writing.
He was happily free of surveillance for the first time in his waking hours of many days. The Chinese chauffeur had driven him to the station, and had furthermore lingered to see that Nogam did not fail to board it. And Nogam felt reasonably safe in assuming that he would not approach the house near Queen Anne’s Gate without seeing (for the mere trouble of looking) a second and an entirely gratuitous shadow attach itself to him with the intention of sticking as tenaciously as that which God had given him. But the next hour was all his own.
His study of the Chinese phonograms at length resulted in the transformation of his careworn face by a slowly dawning smile, the gleeful smile of a mischief-loving child. And when he had worked for a while on the message, touching up the skillfully drawn characters with a pencil the mate to that which Victor had used, he sat back and laughed aloud over the result of his labours, with some appreciation of the glow that warms the cockles of the artist’s heart when his deft pen has raised a cheque from tens to thousands, and he reviews a good job well done.
The torn envelope which had held the message to Shaik Tsin lay at his feet. Nogam had not bothered to worry it open so carefully that it might be resealed without inviting comment; though that need not have been a difficult matter, thanks to the dampness of the night air.
Of the envelope addressed to Sturm, however, he was more considerate; to violate its integrity and seal it up again was an undertaking that required the nicest handling. Nor was it accomplished much before the train drew into Charing Cross.