She and Traherne followed Crespin in, not very eagerly—all three wearily polite, but scarcely interested, unless their faces and walk belied them. Rukh eyed them closely, with eyes so agile that he managed to watch all three of them at once. They had no chance to exchange one covert glance, had they cared to—but they were playing their own hands too carefully and well for that—and they understood each other too thoroughly to need to do so. They looked a little bored. And they looked shockingly tired. The bright day was near its high zenith now, and in its searching light they looked to Rukh to have aged perceptibly in the short time they had been in the billiard-room. He didn’t wonder at it.
“This,” he told them, pointing, “you see, is the apparatus. All ready, Watkins? Won’t you sit down?” He gave Mrs. Crespin a chair, and indicated others to the men. “You have the order for Tashkent, Watkins?”
“Yes, Your ’Ighness,” the valet said, producing the slip with the fake message on it, “but I haven’t coded it.”
“Oh, never mind,” Rukh ordered impatiently. “Send it in clear. Even if some outsider does pick it up, I daresay we can order three cases of champagne without causing international complications.”
Watkins put on his receivers, and sat down at the wireless set, with its many instruments in front of him, tapped the key, made an adjustment, and sat “listening in”—and waited.
“He’s waiting for the reply signal,” the Raja explained.
“Oh!” Crespin rejoined blankly. “May I take one of your excellent cigars, Raja?” he added with a better show of interest.
“By all means,” Rukh told him. He watched Crespin’s face and his hands as the Major lit the cigar. He credited both Traherne and Mrs. Crespin with enough finesse to cloak their thoughts and their emotions bafflingly well, but he made very sure of trapping the Major’s thoughts and emotions as they came. If Major Crespin knew anything at all of the wireless, Rukh made very sure that he would betray it, “chuck it” at him almost.
“I’ve got them,” Watkins announced after a suitable pause, and proceeded to send his message, slowly, very clearly: “The lady has come to terms,” the Morse code spelled very deliberately. Dr. Traherne and Mrs. Crespin understood none of it; Antony Crespin read it as if it had been large, clear print.
“May we speak?” he said in a low voice, bending a little towards Rukh.