“There is one important point which doesn’t seem to have occurred to you,” said Cyril, with languid impatience. “My personal safety must be provided for. Mr dear Mr Hicks, I like your countenance, but you must understand that I cannot consent to leave a place of comparative security in order to plunge into constant danger. You and the lady of whom you speak will be good enough to make adequate arrangements for protecting me from assassination when I am outside these walls. You will also, if you please, arrange to defray any sum that may be due to Dr Gregorescu for his services by that time. His mentioning money matters was quite unnecessary, but since he is so deeply concerned about them, pray let him feel himself secure. That is all I have to say. Please make your own arrangements. I shall be delighted to fall in with them, if these two points are remembered.” He rolled himself another cigarette, and leaned back in his seat, tapping with his fingers on the table as if tired of the subject, while Mr Hicks and the doctor, the latter looking much subdued, entered into a discussion as to ways and means. It was while they were trying to arrange how Queen Ernestine could be accommodated in a house which contained no female inhabitants, that Mr Hicks was struck by the intentness of Cyril’s gaze at the doctor.
“What can it mean?” he thought. “And that tapping—how he keeps it up! It might be Morse—Jehoshaphat! it is Morse. Four dots, two dots, dash dot dash dot, dash dot dash, three dots—Hicks! Hicks! Hicks! and he’s been doing it five minutes already. I understand you perfectly,” he said slowly to the doctor. “There is a difficulty. Perhaps the best plan will be for Lady Usk to drive over here and see what can be done. A woman’s notions often come in useful for circumventing a deadlock.”
Dr Gregorescu welcomed the suggestion, and thought that it might be advisable to hire some furniture, either from Paranati or Novigrad, with a view to the Queen’s visit. Paranati was nearer, but the absence of roads made it almost hopeless to send there. Decidedly Novigrad would be better, but then there was the difficulty of the frontier. Mr Hicks listened and agreed, while all the time, though his eyes were fixed on the doctor, he was interpreting the tapping on the table.
“Hicks, get me out of this to-day, for heaven’s sake! He suspects something. I shall be mad in real earnest if you leave me here another week.”
To answer this appeal, Mr Hicks summoned to his aid all the fertility of invention which had made him famous in three continents. He dared not respond by tapping on the table, but from where he sat Cyril could see his knee, while it was hidden from the doctor. Tapping the knee smartly for a dot, and rubbing his finger along softly for a dash, he answered according to the code.
“Be here this afternoon, and when you hear a row down below, watch out for a stone.” Then he turned to the doctor and summed up. “If I can get a message to Lady Usk in time, she shall come up this afternoon, and you will settle with her what arrangements you can make. The Queen will arrive in a week, possibly sooner, and you will keep his Excellency under your care until then? My friend and I must go over to Paranati to bring that poor mad chap, for he ought to be in your charge as soon as possible, and I may be back here almost as soon as Lady Usk, but if I haven’t arrived, you will explain things to her?”
The doctor agreed, and he and Mr Hicks parted with the utmost cordiality. The patient Mr Bradwell, reduced to utter silence from having exhausted every possible topic of conversation with his guide, was rescued from the bench in the porter’s lodge where he was meekly smoking, and the two men walked down the hill together. No sooner were they out of earshot of the asylum than Mr Hicks said—
“Now, Eben Bradwell, buck up. You’ve got the very biggest order on hand to-day that you ever had, and don’t you forget it.”
“I guess this ain’t the first time I’ve shepherded a lunatic gently into an asylum,” was the reply, in a somewhat injured tone.
“Ebenezer,” said Mr Hicks, “that isn’t a circumstance to what I’m going to have you do to-day. You’ll just make the journey to Paranati and back in the quickest time you ever travelled, and you’ll bring along with you the smartest man on board the Bluebird.”