“Well, now, I don’t entirely.” Brian was perhaps not sorry to give a helping hand to a brother-man. “It might be you’d do well to be alarmed in this case, Evie—I don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery to me. By what I make out from my Khans yonder—who can be precious affable when they like—it has something to do with some piece of jewellery of yours that you gave away or sold. The thing has got into Kamal-ud-din’s hands—whatever it is—and he has it to thank that he ain’t a prisoner like his uncles and cousins.” For with callous disregard of Colonel Bayard’s assurances on his behalf, Kamal-ud-din had first promised effusively to come in and surrender on the following morning, and then employed the interval in removing himself and his forces into the desert, en route for his remote ancestral fortress of Umarganj. Possibly the messenger who conveyed the letter had conveyed also information as to the state of the British troops; at any rate, Kamal-ud-din was fully justified in his belief that pursuit was out of the question.
Eveleen pointed a dramatic finger at her husband. “Put the blame where it ought to be, Brian. There’s the culprit for you. ’Twas that blue pendant Uncle Tom gave me, that I showed y’at Bombay—the seal that wouldn’t seal, don’t you know? Well, Ambrose found the Khans set a value on it, believing ’twas the seal of King Solomon, and had been stolen from them years and years ago, so he very kindly made them a present of it, without so much as asking my leave.”
“I remember it—a sort of blue cheese-plate. But it’s you are joking now, Evie. D’ye ask me to believe he took your pendant and gave it away without your knowing?”
Richard growled inarticulately, and Eveleen felt obliged to furnish the explanation he disdained to supply.
“Well, not that exactly. I had pledged it, or pawned it—whatever you like to call it—to get you that money you wanted, when you were afraid you’d miss the chance of getting into the General’s family, don’t you know? and Ambrose was shockingly cross with me about it. So I suppose he thought he’d punish me, but ’twas he gave it to Kamal-ud-din, you see.”
“Holy Moses! I come into this too, do I?” groaned Brian. “Don’t betray me to my old lad, either of you, or I will get a wigging. For you see, Evie, we have spoilt his luck between us. The stone and you go together somehow—it’s blue, and your eyes are blue; green, rather, I’d say if I was asked—so Khair Husain told me, and when y’are separated, the luck’s split. At present we have the lady, and Kamal-ud-din has the pendant—the Belle and the Bauble, to make a pantomime title out of it. If the General had had the Bauble as well as the Belle, he’d have swept up Kamal-ud-din with the rest of the Khans, and conquered the country at one go. If Kamal-ud-din had had the Belle as well as the Bauble, the Khans would have won t’other day, and cut all our throats on the field of battle, and led the General in triumph by a gold chain through his nose. Well, there y’are, you see. Don’t it strike you as a bit of a temptation to the Arabits to bring the Belle and the Bauble together again by carrying off the lady?”
“I’d like to see them try it!” declared Eveleen defiantly. “I sent a message to Kamal-ud-din by poor Tom Carthew when he had the stone first that I was ill-wishing it with all my might, but that’s nothing to what I’d do if they tried to get hold of me. Besides”—with one of the sudden changes of mood her husband found so bewildering—“it’s just a notion I have that Ambrose wouldn’t be so ready to part with me, though he thinks he can make free as he likes with my things.”
It was absolutely impossible for Richard to rearrange his thoughts quickly enough to respond adequately to this overture of peace and the glance that accompanied it, but he managed to call up some sort of smile, and to mutter, “Oh no—rayther not, I’m sure!” Brian, scenting a reconciliation, made haste to clinch the matter.
“And don’t you be so nasty about that old pendant, Evie. I’m quite certain Ambrose would have given you something instead, if y’had asked him nicely.”
“Ah, but Ambrose don’t agree with giving his wife presents when she can’t keep accounts and wastes his money for him,” said Eveleen wickedly. “There! would you believe it, I was forgetting my joke that I had for you! What d’ye think of that, now?” she brought out of her pocket a handkerchief tied up in knots, and unfastening them, let a small torrent of gems tumble out upon the cane lounge where she was sitting. Richard’s face darkened again angrily.