“Six.”
“She could give you a jolly good hug, anyway,” Crespin said with a mirthless and slightly tipsy laugh.
Traherne shot him a sharp look. “You wouldn’t want another,” he said darkly, and turned away to watch the door.
For a time there was silence. Neither man spoke or moved and from the outer stillness no stir of life came. Traherne’s face grew like a death mask, sweat gathered on Crespin’s forehead, and specked his red face.
A jackal called.
Some deeper-throated thing answered or challenged it out on the mountains.
“Where do you suppose we really are, Traherne?” Crespin asked unsteadily.
“On the map, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, in the never-never land,” Traherne answered without moving his eyes from the door. “Somewhere on the way to Bokhara. I’ve been searching my memory for all I ever heard about Rukh. I fancy very little is known, except that it seems to send forth a peculiarly poisonous breed of fanatics.”