Carthew shook his head. “I wouldn’t wish to damp you, ma’am, but I doubt the General’s ever getting this far.”
“But why? You can’t think he’d leave us in the lurch?”
“Not if he knew it, I’m certain. But how is he to know where you are?”
Eveleen stared at him. “But why not? Where else in the world would we be than here?”
“But why should he think to find you here? For anything he knows, if you escaped the storm at all you’re on t’other side of the river.”
“The other side of the river!” she repeated, her eyes dilating. “But how would we be there?”
“Didn’t I tell you, ma’am”—miserably—“of the plot I made to catch Captain Lennox for the Khan—when it was you they meant all the time? I had to lay a false trail to keep the General from sending the Camel Corps to cut us off between the river and this, and so I did it by bringing in the Codgers into the business, through that old Parsee that was with you.”
“The poor little good old man? D’ye tell me he was in it? Sure I’ll never believe in anybody again!”
“Not in the plot against you, but he was bringing supplies to the Khan from his aunt—one of Gul Ali Khan’s wives—in Qadirabad. Paying his army has swallowed up the Khan’s own treasure, pretty near, so he got word to this old lady, and she promised him jewels to a fairish amount. Old Firozji was to carry ’em about him, and I gave him all the directions—how he was to get protection by sailing in a British officer’s company, and make sure there was no trouble with the Codgers by engaging some of ’em to guard him. At one of the halts on the river—he was not to know beforehand which it would be—a messenger from the Khan would meet him with a certain password, and he would give up the jewels to him. The rest of the plan we arranged with the Codgers. They were to capture the boats by surprise, and do what they liked with ’em, but the old Parsee and the British officer were to be brought across the river on mussucks and handed over to us. That was my idea, but you know it was yourself, and no officer, that the Khan was after. The Codgers had the password, so that old Firozji would come quiet, and when he had given us the jewels he was to be let go, so that he could tell the General his boats and everything had been stolen, and he had escaped with nothing but his life to bring word of Captain Lennox being prisoner. It was the Codgers made things go wrong, though why they should have brought you across the river in the boat I can’t say.”
“I made them—with a pistol,” said Eveleen in a low voice.