"I"ve been too busy to think of that.... I mean, till lately."
"Ah?"
Amber flushed boyishly. "There was a girl at Quain"s--a guest.... But she left before I dared speak. Perhaps it was as well."
"Why?"
"Because she was too fine and sweet and good for me, Rutton."
"Like every man"s first love."
The elder man"s glance was keen--too keen for Amber to dissimulate successfully under it. "You"re right," he admitted ruefully. "It"s the first sure-enough trouble of the sort I ever experienced. And, of course, it had to be hopeless."
"Why?" persisted Rutton.
"Because--I"ve half a notion there"s a chap waiting for her at home."
"At home?"
"In England." The need for a confidant was suddenly imperative upon the younger man. "She"s an English girl--half English, that is; her mother was an American, a schoolmate of Quain"s wife; her father, an Englishman in the Indian service."
"Her name?"
"Sophia Farrell." A peculiar quality, a certain tensity, in Rutton"s manner, forced itself upon Amber"s attention. "Why?" he asked. "Do you know the Farrells? What"s the matter?"
Rutton"s eyes met his stonily; out of the ashen mask of his face, that suddenly had whitened beneath the brown, they glared, afire but unseeing. His hands writhed, the fingers twisting together with cruel force, the knuckles grey. Abruptly, as if abandoning the attempt to rea.s.sert his self-control, he jumped up and went quickly to a window, there to stand, his back to Amber, staring fixedly out into the storm-racked night. "I knew her father," he said at length, his tone constrained and odd, "long ago, in India."
"He"s out there now--a Political, I believe they call him, or something of the sort."
"Yes."
"She"s going out to rejoin him."
"What!" Rutton came swiftly back to Amber, his voice shaking. "What did you say?"
"Why, yes. She travels with friends by the western route to join Colonel Farrell at Darjeeling, where he"s stationed just now. Shortly after I came down she left; Mrs. Quain had a wire a day or so ago, saying she was on the point of sailing from San Francisco.... Good Lord, Rutton! are you ill?"
Something in the man"s face had brought Amber to his feet, a prey to inexpressible concern; it was as if a mask had dropped and he were looking upon the soul of a man in mortal torture.
"No," gasped Rutton, "I"m all right. Besides," he added beneath his breath, so that Amber barely caught the syllables, "it"s too late."
As rapidly as he had lost he seemed to regain mastery of his inexplicable emotion. His face became again composed, almost immobile, and stepping to the table he selected a cigarette and rolled it gently between his slim brown fingers. "I"m sorry to have alarmed you," he said, his tone a bit too even not to breed a doubt in the mind of his hearer. "It"s nothing serious--a little trouble of the heart, of long standing, incurable--I hope."
Perplexed, yet hesitating to press him further, Amber watched him furtively, instinctively a.s.sured that between this man and the Farrells there existed some extraordinary bond; wondering how that could be, convinced in his soul that somehow the entanglement involved the woman he loved, he still feared to put his suspicions to the question, lest he should learn that which he had no right to know ... and while he watched was startled by the change that came over Rutton. At ease, one moment, outwardly composed if absorbed in thought, the next he was rigid, every muscle taut, every nerve tense as a steel spring, his keen, thoughtful face hardening with a look of brutal hatred, his eyes narrowing until no more than a glint of fire was visible between the lashes, lips straining apart until they showed thin and bloodless, with a gleam of white, set teeth between. His head jerked back suddenly, his gaze fixing itself first upon the window, then shifting to the door.
And his fingers, contracting, tore the cigarette in half.
"Rutton, what the deuce is the matter?"
Rutton seemed not to hear; Amber got his answer from the door, which was swung wide and slammed shut. A blast of frosty air and a flurry of snow swept across the room. And against the door there leaned a man puffing for breath and coughing spasmodically--a gross and monstrous bulk of flesh, unclean and unwholesome to the eye, attired in an extravagant array of coloured garments, tawdry silks and satins clinging, sodden, to his ponderous and unwieldy limbs.
"The babu!" cried Amber unconsciously; and was rewarded by a flash of recognition from the coal-black, beady, evil eyes of the man.
But for that involuntary exclamation the tableau held unbroken for a s.p.a.ce; Rutton standing transfixed, the torn halves of the cigarette between his fingers, his head well up and back, his stare level, direct, uncompromising, a steady challenge to the intruder; the babu resting with one shoulder against the door, panting stertorously and trembling with the cold and exposure he had undergone, yet with his attention unflinchingly concentrated upon Rutton; and, finally, Amber, a little out of the picture and quite unconsidered of the others, not without a certain effect as of a supernumerary standing in the wings and watching the development of the drama.
Then, demanding Amber"s silence with an imperative movement of his hand, Rutton spoke. "Well, babu?" he said quietly, the shadow of a bitter and weary smile curving his thin, hard lips.
The Bengali moved a pace or two from the door, and plucked nervously at the throat of his surtout, finally managing to insert one hand in the folds of silk across his bosom.
"I seek," he said distinctly in Urdu, and not without a definite note of menace in his manner, "the man calling himself Rutton Sahib?"
Very deliberately Rutton inclined his head. "I am he."
"Hazoor!" The babu laboriously doubled up his enormous body in profound obeisance. Having recovered, he nodded to Amber with the easy familiarity of an old acquaintance. "To you, likewise, greeting, Amber Sahib."
"What!" Rutton swung sharply to Amber with an exclamation of amazement.
"You know this fellow, David?"
The babu cut in hastily, stimulated by a pressing anxiety to clear himself. "Hazoor, I did but err, being misled by his knowledge of our tongue as well as by that pale look of you he wears. And, indeed, is it strange that I should take him for you, who was told to seek you in this wild land?"
"Be silent!" Rutton told him angrily.
"My lord"s will is his slave"s." Resignedly the babu folded his fat arms.
"Tell me about this," Rutton demanded of Amber.
"The a.s.s ran across me in the woods south of the station, the day I came down," explained Amber, summarising the episode as succinctly as he could. "He didn"t call me by your name, but I"ve no doubt he"s telling the truth about mistaking me for you. At all events he hazoor-ed me a number of times, talked a lot of rot about some silly "Voice," and finally made me a free gift of a nice little bronze box that wouldn"t open. After which he took to his heels, saying he"d call later for my answer--whatever he meant by that. He did call by night and stole the box. That"s about all I know of him, thus far. But I"d watch out for him, if I were you; if he isn"t a raving lunatic, I miss my guess."
"Indeed, my lord, it is all quite as the sahib says," the babu admitted graciously, his eyes gleaming with sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt. "Circ.u.mstances conspired to mislead me; but that I was swift to discover. Nor did I lose time in remedying the error, as you have heard. Moreover--"
He shut up suddenly at a sign from Rutton, with a ludicrous shrug of his huge shoulders disclaiming any ill-intent or wrong-doing; and while Rutton remained deep in thought by the table, the babu held silence, his gaze flickering suspiciously round the room, searching the shadows, questioning the closed door behind which Doggott lay asleep (evidence of which fact was not wanting in his snores), resting fleetingly on Amber"s face, returning to Rutton. His features were composed; his face, indeed, might have been taken as a model for some weird mask of unctuous depravity, but for his eyes, which betrayed a score of differing phases of emotion. He was by turns apparently possessed by fear, malice, distrust, a subtle sense of triumph, contempt for Amber, deference to Rutton, and a feeling that he was master not alone of the situation but of the man whom he professed to honor so extravagantly.
At length Rutton looked up, suppressing a sigh. "Your errand, babu?"
"Is it, then, your will that I should speak before this man?" The Bengali nodded impudently at Amber.
"It is my will."
"Shabash! I bear a message, hazoor, from the Bell."
"You are the Mouthpiece of the Voice?"
"That honor is mine, hazoor. For the rest I am--"
"Behari Lal Chatterji," interrupted Rutton impatiently; "solicitor of the Inner Temple--disbarred; anointed thief, liar, jackal, lickspittle, and perjurer--I know you."
"My lord," said the man insolently, "omits from his catalogue of my accomplishments my chiefest honour; he forgets that, with him, I am an accepted Member of the Body."
"The Body wears strange members that employs you, babu," commented Rutton bitterly. "It has fallen upon evil days when such as you are charged with a message of the Bell."