Dr. Traherne knew it.
“Can you lock that door?” the soldier demanded, pointing towards the corridor.
His wife ran to it breathlessly. “No key this side!” she told him hoarsely.
Traherne went to it quickly. “Don’t open it,” he whispered. “There are soldiers in the passage. I’ll hold it.” He put his back against the door—and stood rock-like before it.
Major Crespin strode to the wireless instruments, and flung himself down in the chair worn a little from the often sitting of what lay down below the balcony, in the chair still warm from the human heat of living Watkins.
Major Crespin took no thought of that. He was examining the instruments. He examined them rapidly.
“The scoundrel had reduced the current,” he exclaimed, making an adjustment with feverish haste, but steady, expert fingers. “Now the wave-length!” He still was adjusting. He caught up the receivers, and clapped them on—they too still a little warm from Watkins’ ears. Then he began to transmit, sending their desperate cry for help out into the alien spaces of air—their grand hailing cry of distress—over the Himalayas to a British-held station. Traherne at the door, alert for the slightest movement outside it, Lucilla breathless, drawn-eyed, watched him breathlessly. They were openly nervous and anxious, tormented, but Crespin worked calmly on, expert and confident, braced by the liquor he’d gulped, doubly braced and better that he was doing something, and knew that he was able to do something—something that might, by God’s own mercy, and England’s own good luck, avail them, and succor.
He ended the first sending, and sat listening in quietly, while their breath came in painful pants; Traherne’s hands knotted convulsively, the agony-lines in the woman’s face cutting its loveliness deeper, slashing furrow and sags of age on her youth.
“Do you get any answer?” Traherne whispered across the room, impatience cracking through the leash of his prudence.
“No,” Crespin replied cheerfully, over his shoulder. “No; I don’t expect any. It was scarcely worth listening-in—I’m sure they haven’t the power. But it’s an even chance that I get them all the same. I’ll repeat now—if I get the time.” Again the sure, dexterous fingers rushed over the key. Once more their life-or-death call hurtled out into the almost chartless ocean of atmosphere over the mountains of Rukh, calling, “For our blood’s sake, and the flag’s, come save us.”