Lucilla looked him in the eye slowly and squarely before she went, turned and threw a swift, brave smile to the two Englishmen who still stood waiting impotent in the salon. Crespin smiled back at her; but Basil Traherne could not.
The Raja turned back to them from the door. “Gentlemen,” he offered, “a whiskey and soda?” Major Crespin gestured his refusal, Traherne stared his blankly. “No?” He pressed another bell. “Then good-night, good-night,” he said as two servants almost instantly came into the room.
Traherne and Crespin without a word or a look, turned on their heels and went side by side through the opened door, the native servants beside them.
Neither spoke, until at a turning the Raja’s servitors indicated that the Englishmen separated there.
“Well, cheerio!” Crespin said.
“Cheerio!” Traherne replied.
They were English.
As their footsteps died in the stretch of the great corridor, Rukh went to the loggia opening, stood there a moment musing out into the snow-and-moonlit night, and came back to near the dark, almost dead fire. He took up a large electric torch from one of the tables, and switched on its powerful light, and when he had, switched off the lights of the room. The great salon was in total darkness now except for the moonlight and snowlight that poured in through the loggia, and for the one circle-pool of radiance that fell from the downheld torch on to the crimson center of the shawl on the floor.
Rukh moved to the mantel, and threw the strong light of the torch full upon the idol standing there, grinned at it slowly, made a low ironic salaam, and turned away, still smiling a little, lighting himself to the door. As he went the bird of prey screamed again, directly over the loggia now it sounded, so near that its wings might rasp against the roof—roosting there perhaps—an ugly, tuneless cry of an untamed, implacable thing, but lower and slower, more throated than it had sounded before—this sounded the monstrous gurgle of gluttony replete and content.
The great hovering beast-bird screamed once more. But the gong did not speak again.