They drew closer together—one, not three in their sudden hope, which tingled through the very room vibrantly as the telegraphist’s speaking wire’s words tingle through the air or ocean they charge.
“If we could get control of the wireless for five minutes,” Crespin muttered, “and call up the aerodrome at Amil-Serai—”
“What then?” Lucilla whispered wildly.
“Why, we’d soon bring the Raja to his senses,” Crespin told her.
“If—” Dr. Traherne said under his breath.
“Where do you suppose the installation is?” Mrs. Crespin asked her husband.
“Somewhere overhead, I should say,” Crespin replied. And they hung on his simple words. The specialist had come into his own. The wife who had discarded and judged him, the friend who had despised and pitied, looked at him with quick respect. He was in command now. Their peril and his special equipment made them look up to him. It is human nature to hold as a god every possible friend in dire need. Any port in such storm!
“We must go very cautiously, Major,” Traherne reminded him, with a note of deference in his voice. “We must on no account let the Raja suspect that we know anything about wireless telegraphy, else he’d take care we should never get near the installation.”
“Right you are, Traherne,” was the cheerful reply. “I’ll lie very low.”
Suddenly noticing it, and remembering, Mrs. Crespin flung the costly Eastern shawl from her. “And how,” she demanded, “are we to behave to this horrible man?”