Stratford was busied, with Fitz and Kustendjian, in compiling the official chronicle of the events of the last few days, and it did not strike him that there was any special danger in Georgia’s going to visit a patient who had asked for her attendance. He knew nothing of the evil fame of Khadija, and thought that if Abd-ur-Rahim could be brought to give his consent, the ride to Bir-ul-Malikat would be a pleasant change for Georgia after her imprisonment within the four walls of the harem.
“One of us might go over with the escort and fetch you back,” he suggested, “if you could fix any special time.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Georgia, with a guilty feeling of concealment, “for I don’t know how long I shall be. If it is necessary to perform an operation, I shall probably be detained some time. Could you spare Mr Anstruther to help me get my things together, and to see that the horses are properly saddled?”
Fitz jumped up from the divan with great alacrity, and when Georgia had him alone she confided her plan to him, explaining the importance of her going to Bir-ul-Malikat at this juncture, and the probability that her stay there might extend over several days. His first impulse was naturally to declare that he would go too, and to reproach her with unkindness and lack of confidence in him when she refused his escort somewhat decidedly. But Georgia had her answer ready.
“I don’t want you at Bir-ul-Malikat, Mr Anstruther, because I think you would be more useful here. I want to arrange a code of signals which will show whether all is going well or not. Do you know anything of heliography? I have a small mirror in my dressing-case, and, if you have another, we could each signal night and morning how things were going, for I ought to know if Sir Dugald gets worse. I suppose one flash would mean ‘All right!’ and two ‘Send help!’”
“Oh, we can do better than that,” said Fitz, whose face had brightened perceptibly when he found that he might be of use even though he was not allowed to act as Georgia’s escort. “I will jot down the Morse code for you, Miss Keeling, and then we can hold conversations. Long and short flashes will represent dashes and dots, you see, and none of the natives will be able to imitate our signals, though they might easily twig what one flash meant, and signal ‘All right!’ when it was all wrong. You didn’t know I studied telegraphy a little before I came out, did you? One never knows when things may prove useful, and I chummed up with a clerk in the Whitcliffe post-office, and got him to put me up to the dodges.”
Leaving Fitz occupied in writing out the code, Georgia next made a raid on the stores under the care of Ismail Bakhsh. She felt it to be a matter of the greatest importance that Rahah and she should take their own provisions with them, since to depend on Khadija’s liberality would be merely a gratuitous invitation to her to poison them both, and with this danger in her mind she secured a sufficient quantity of meat extract and other portable articles of food to last for three or four days. Ismail Bakhsh demurred persistently to parting with the stores in his charge, except in obedience to an officially signed order, yielding only under protest; while, when he discovered, from some chance words let drop by Rahah, the real object of the journey, he could scarcely be restrained from going at once to Stratford and begging him to prevent it. Rahah overwhelmed him with shrill reproaches, for, little as she approved of the expedition herself, she was determined not to allow any man living to thwart her mistress’s wishes; but it was Georgia herself who forced him to give an unwilling acquiescence to the plan. Her plea that she was going to secure a medicine that might cure the Burra Sahib he dismissed with contempt, remarking that the Burra Sahib’s illness did not concern her—a slight to her profession which aroused all the ire of which Georgia was capable. Looking straight at him, she spoke sternly—
“Am I to ask your leave to go where I will, Ismail Bakhsh—you who have eaten my father’s salt? I am going to Bir-ul-Malikat, and I forbid you to interfere. You take too much upon yourself.”
Ismail Bakhsh saluted in dumb amazement as Rahah translated the words with much gusto.
“Truly Sinjāj Kīlin himself speaks in his daughter!” he murmured submissively, as Georgia increased by another tin the pile which Rahah was carrying, and left the room without vouchsafing him another glance. He watched the two women out of sight, and after securing the door of the store-room, went off to his quarters, revolving many things in his mind.