Voices in the Night Part 60

'Not quite!' he answered. 'There was yet one thing lacking; one thing that I had meant to have secured--only I could not--you were so late in coming.'

'I?' she asked curiously. 'Was it something to do with me, then?'

'With the perfection of your dress--it needs something!'

She coloured up pink as her roses, and gave a hurried glance at a mirror opposite. 'I do not see it,' she said angrily.

'Yes, you do!' he persisted, looking in the mirror also. 'There is something wanted _here_.' He pointed to her white throat, and in the mirror his hand pointed to it also.

'Ah'h,' she sighed thoughtfully.--'Yes! pearls--but I had no real ones.

And--and I can stand paste--but somehow sham pearls----!'

'No! not pearls! No! never! Not milk-and-water pearls!' he protested.

'Not with roses there'--he pointed to the glistening shoulders--'and roses there'--the hand in the mirror seemed almost to touch the glistening hair.--'It should be roses here. And--and I had some pink topazes--a bagatelle--you might have bought them from me if you would not take them as a gift. Bah! a trifle!--just drops of pink dew hanging from a fine gold chain----'

Her hard blue eyes grew covetous; she drew in her breath. 'Drops of pink dew hanging from a fine gold chain!--How--how perfectly delicious!

And cheap too--oh! do let me see them.'

'Why not, madame? Are they not in my office room; but'--he looked at her and laughed--'will you not smoke _one_ cigarette while you inspect them?'

She looked at him sharply in her turn, then laughed too. He had been clever! She rather admired him for it; though, if he thought he had gained any advantage, he was mistaken.

'Why not, monsieur?' she answered, coolly helping herself from the box.

'As I have to see the topazes, I may as well smoke while you are fetching them.'

She threw herself into an arm-chair and nodded at him. But when the pink topazes came, as they did come to her, after a minute or two, she stood up again in the intensity of her admiration. There were other jewels in the quaint little Indian casket which, with an ill grace, he had brought back with him from the office;--among them a string of remarkably fine pearls--but she never even looked at them. The topaz dewdrops absorbed her. He had been right! They were the one thing wanting.

The only question that remained was, briefly, how much she could afford to give for them.

As she stood calculating, as only women of her type can calculate, Mr.

Lucanaster watched her with an easy smile, thinking what a curious hold little stones--which to him only meant so much money--had upon humanity. There was a ruby, for instance, in that very casket, which had taken him three years to wile away from a minor member of the Royal Family. Then there was the emerald----

A sudden sound of distant voices echoed through the stillness of the night, and Mrs. Chris looked up from the pink dew, startled.

'I wonder what that is?' she said, pausing. 'I wish that man Jones hadn't told his foolish tales. He has made me nervous, quite nervous.'

Mr. Lucanaster moved a step nearer. 'You needn't be afraid with me, Jenny,' he said, attempting sentiment, 'even if there was----'

He got no further, for the figure of a very old native, withered, bent, dressed (or undressed) in the nondescript garb of a scullion, showed at the door, then advanced with furtive haste and equally furtive importance.

'_Khodawund!_' it said toothlessly and with joined hands. 'It is about to come again. This slave saw it then--in '57. He was _khansaman_ then to Ricketts-_sahib bahadur_, who was killed----'

'Curse you!' shouted Mr. Lucanaster, 'what the devil----? Then, as the simplest way of getting at the truth, he ran into the verandah. Every servant had disappeared; but there was no mistaking the sound that came clearer now--it was the sound of a crowd, an angry crowd! He stood irresolute for a moment, and then, along the road that lay between his house and Chris Davenant s, he saw two men running with torches.

'There is thatch to both,' called one. 'We will take _his_ first--he who spoilt our plan. The others will settle the depraver of Kings'

Houses!'

That was enough! He was back in the house in a second, but not in the drawing-room. In his office, at the safe which he had left open!

Meanwhile Viva, alone with the furtive haste and furtive importance which had seen it all before, stood paralysed with terror; stood in that dress of the year of grace 1857, feeling as if that past had claimed her.

But it _had_ claimed the old anatomy who had returned, in his old age, to the first rung of the ladder whence he had climbed to that dignity of '_khansaman_ to Ricketts-_sahib bahadur_ who was killed.'

They had come back to him, those days of livery and gold lace when he had served a lady, dressed perhaps in pink tarlatan! They had come back, and the furtiveness left the remnant that remained of that dignity; the importance returned. 'But the _mem_ was not killed, _Huzoor_! How should it be so when Mohubbut Khan was there? Quick!

follow me, _Huzoor_! This slave knows where safety lies! Has he not seen it all before? Quick, _Huzoor_, quick! The _mem-sahiba_ is safe--quite safe if she follows Mohubbut Khan.'

Safe, quite safe! Those words were enough for this woman in her pink tarlatan, whose nerves, such as they were, had been juggled with by that same pink tarlatan! She forgot everything else, even the pink dewdrops!

The next instant she was out--as many a _mem-sahiba_ had been out in that fateful May-time more than forty years before--with no guide to safety but a native servant. And this was no servant of hers, bound to her by the slender tie--slender in the West, at any rate!--of personal service. Mohubbut Khan was only servant of that past--the past which had brought him nothing for his old age save a return to the greasy swab and miserable pittance of his apprentices.h.i.+p to service!

Yet as, with a breathlessness that had not been in that midnight flight of forty years ago, he headed straight as a die for the Garden Mound, he prattled cheerfully of the future as he might have done then.

Let the _mem-sahiba_ stay herself on the Merciful and Clement, including, of course, His servant Mohubbut! As for the master, the _aka-sahib_, who, perforce, had to think of more than mere safety, the Merciful and Clement had him in his keeping also. And though Mohubbut could not, unfortunately, be in two places at once, some other slave would doubtless be raised up!

There was no fear; none! Was not Jan-Ali-shan-_sahib_--he pointed into the night--there to be reckoned with still? And had it been possible during that nine long months for any black face--even Mohubbut's, which had remained outside after he had put the _mem_ inside--to win in to the Garden Mound?

So, hovering between past and present, the old man who had been '_khansaman_ to Ricketts-_sahib bahadur_ who was killed,' chattered of safety----

Until the Garden Mound was reached, and then----

Then he stood in the dim moonlight--helpless--bewildered--importance gone! For where was safety, where was Jan-Ali-shan?

Ruins, and flowers! Only one thing as it had been forty years before.

The English flag!

He headed straight for it comforted, the importance returning. 'The _mem-sahiba_ need have no fear,' he muttered glibly; 'was not Mohubbut _khansaman_ to Ricketts-_sahib bahadur_ who was killed?--but the _mem_ was not. Ah! no!'

Yet, once more, the wide ruined doorways of the Residency upset the unstable balance of the half-crazy old man's confidence. But only for a moment. The next, he had lost even importance in quick decision, as the sound of running footsteps, of men's voices, rose against the background of faint elusive cries and distant disturbance which had been with them, fitfully, in their flight.

'Quick, _Huzoor_, quick! they come! Have no fear! The _mem_ was never killed! yet they came before!'

And Viva, tarlatan in ribbons, almost fainting with fear, followed blindly; then sank behind a heap of stones that lay--part of a ruined stair--in the lowest story of the turret.

Only just in time; for the voices were close at hand, the steps upon the outside stair that led to the roof.

'Lo! we can do so much, if naught else,' came savagely: 'we can end their boast, brothers!' The voice was an educated one, and there was some answering laughs, as five or six white figures pa.s.sed upwards.

'Have no fear, _mem-sahiba_!' whispered the toothless comforter.

'Jan-Ali-shan will settle _them_.'

Apparently he did; or some one else carrying on the tradition of the dead man who lay in the Hollow of Heroes; for almost ere the last climber could have reached the top, they were down the narrow stairs again helter-skelter.

'Trra!' said one vexedly. 'To think they should not have forgotten that! Truly, it is ill doing aught against them, and they so wise! Let us go back to the city--there be plenty of fools there.'

'Said I not so?' whispered the toothless comforter triumphantly, as the steps died away. 'He hath sent them forth discomfited. It was even so before, when Mohubbut was _khansaman_ to Ricketts-_sahib_ who was killed--but the _mem_, was not.'

Mrs. Chris, however, was past comfort. Had they come back again she would not have stirred; and she sat in the darkness behind the heap of stones, shuddering and sobbing, too terrified even to hear that monotonous refrain--'Have no fear! Have no fear!'