“No doubt; but how would you get them here?” snapped Traherne.
That was unanswerable, and Crespin made no attempt to answer it.
“I wish to God we had them here though!” the physician added passionately, not looking at the man he spoke to, but with tortured eyes hard on the door, his ears strained to catch a woman’s step in the hall.
“I wish we had,” Major Crespin assented dejectedly. He pulled himself out of the armchair, levering himself up by its arms, and moved to the loggia. “My hat!” he exclaimed, and whistled in surprise and approval as the dinner table met his gaze. “I say—it looks as if our friend were going to do us well.”
A servant came in with a large wine-cooler and put it down. Traherne paid him no attention, but Crespin watched him narrowly, and as soon as the native had gone as he’d come, and closed the door behind him, Crespin pulled a bottle up from the ice, and inspected its label. He whistled again, and his bloodshot eyes glistened. “Perrier Jouet, nineteen-o-six, by the Lord!” He ran an affectionate tremulous fat finger over the already beading gold-foiled neck of the bottle thirstily. Even poor Crespin’s fingers were thirsty. He was one big thirst, and the sight of the vintage wine almost maddened him. He rammed it back into its ice pack, and strolled over to the ottoman, and sank into its cushions. “It’s a rum start this, Traherne,” he murmured. “I suppose you intellectual chaps would call it romantic.”
Traherne took his eyes from the door for a moment. “More romantic than agreeable, I should say,” he muttered, as he picked the small goddess up from the mantle. “I don’t like the looks of this lady,” he added as he put it down.
“What is she?” Crespin asked sleepily.
“The same figure we saw in the little temple, where we landed,” Traherne told him.
Both were talking to lift a little, if they could, the strain of the tension that both were feeling, and of the bitterness that surged in each against the other.
“How many arms has she got?” Crespin demanded, regarding her lazily.