"Thank you, Mr. Browne, for being so frank with us," she said coolly.
"If you don"t mind, I _will_ consult my solicitor." She bowed ever so slightly, indicating that the interview was at an end, and, moreover, that it had not been of her choosing.
"Any time, your ladyship," said Browne, also bowing. "I think Mrs.
Browne wants to speak to you about the rooms."
"We are quite settled, Mr. Browne, and very well satisfied," she said pointedly, turning red with a fresh touch of anger.
"I trust you have not taken the rooms at this end."
"We have. We are occupying them." She arose and started away, Deppingham hesitating between his duty to her and the personal longing to pull Browne"s nose.
"I"m sorry," said Browne. "We were warned not to take them. They are said to be unbearable when the hot winds come in October."
"What"s that?" demanded Deppingham.
"The book of instruction and description which we have secured sets all that out," said the other. "Mr. Britt, my attorney, had his stenographer take it all down in Bombay. It"s our private Baedeker, you see. We called on the Bombay agent for the Skaggs-Wyckholme Company. He lived with them in this house for ten months. No one ever slept in this end of the building. It"s strange that the servants didn"t warn you."
"The da--the confounded servants left us yesterday before we came--every mother"s son of "em. There isn"t a servant on the place."
"What? You don"t mean it?"
"Are you coming?" called Lady Deppingham from the doorway.
"At once, my dear," replied Deppingham, shuffling uneasily. "By Jove, we"re in a pretty mess, don"t you know. No servants, no food, no----"
"Wait a minute, please," interrupted Browne. "I say, Britt, come here a moment, will you? Lord Deppingham says the servants have struck."
The American lawyer, a chubby, red-faced man of forty, with clear grey eyes and a stubby mustache, whistled soulfully.
"What"s the trouble? Cut their wages?" he asked.
"Wages? My good man, we"ve never laid eyes on "em," said Deppingham, drawing himself up.
"I"ll see what I can do, Mr. Browne. Got to have cooks, eh, Lord Deppingham?" Without waiting for an answer he dashed off. His lordship observing that his wife had disappeared, followed Browne to the bal.u.s.trade, overlooking the upper terrace. The native carriers were leaving the grounds, when Britt"s shrill whistle brought them to a standstill. No word of the ensuing conversation reached the ears of the two white men on the balcony, but the pantomime was most entertaining.
Britt"s stocky figure advanced to the very heart of the group. It was quite evident that his opening sentences were listened to impa.s.sively.
Then, all at once, the natives began to gesticulate furiously and to shake their heads. Whereupon Britt pounded the palm of his left hand with an emphatic right fist, occasionally pointing over his shoulder with a stubborn thumb. At last, the argument dwindled down to a force of two--Britt and a tall, sallow Mohammedan. For two minutes they harangued each other and then the native gave up in despair. The lawyer waved a triumphant hand to his friends and then climbed into one of the litters, to be borne off in the direction of the town.
"He"ll have the servants back at work before two o"clock," said Browne calmly. Deppingham was transfixed with astonishment.
"How--how the devil do you--does he bring "em to time like that?" he murmured. He afterward said that if he had had Saunders there at that humiliating moment he would have kicked him.
"They"re afraid of the American battleship," said Browne.
"But where is the American battleship?" demanded Deppingham, looking wildly to sea.
"They understand that there will be one here in a day or two if we need it," said Browne with a sly grin. "That"s the bluff we"ve worked." He looked around for his wife, and, finding that she had gone inside, politely waved his hand to the Englishman and followed.
At three o"clock, Britt returned with the recalcitrant servants--or at least the "pick" of them, as he termed the score he had chosen from the hundred or more. He seemed to have an Aladdin-like effect over the horde. It did not appear to depress him in the least that from among the personal effects of more than one peeped the ominous blade of a kris, or the clutch of a great revolver. He waved his hand and snapped his fingers and they herded into the servants" wing, from which in a twinkling they emerged ready to take up their old duties. They were not a liveried lot, but they were swift and capable.
Calmly taking Lord Deppingham and his following into his confidence, he said, in reply to their indignant remonstrances, later on in the day:
"I know that an American man-o"-war hasn"t any right to fire upon British possessions, but you just keep quiet and let well enough alone.
These fellows believe that the Americans can shoot straighter and with less pity than any other set of people on earth. If they ever find out the truth, we won"t be able to control "em a minute. It won"t hurt you to let "em believe that we can blow the Island off the map in half a day, and they won"t believe you if you tell "em anything to the contrary. They just simply _know_ that I can send wireless messages and that a cruiser would be out there to-morrow if necessary, pegging away at these green hills with cannon b.a.l.l.s so big that there wouldn"t be anything left but the horizon in an hour or two. You let me do the talking. I"ve got "em bluffed and I"ll keep "em that way. Look at that!
See those fellows getting ready to wash the front windows? They don"t need it, I"ll confess, but it makes conversation in the servants" hall."
Over in the gorgeous west wing, Lord Deppingham later on tried to convince his sulky little wife that the Americans were an amazing lot, after all. Bromley tapped at the door.
"Tea is served in the hanging garden, my lady," she announced. Her mistress looked up in surprise, red-eyed and a bit dishevelled.
"The--the what?"
"It"s a very pretty place just outside the rooms of the American lady and gentleman, my lady. It"s on the shady side and quite under the shelf of the mountain. There"s a very cool breeze all the time, they say, from the caverns."
Deppingham glanced at the sun-baked window ledges of their own rooms and swore softly.
"Ask some one to bring the tea things in here, Bromley," she said sternly, her piquant face as hard and set as it could possibly be--which, as a matter of fact, was not noticeably adamantine. "Besides, I want to give some orders. We must have system here, not Americanisms."
"Very well, my lady."
After she had retired Deppingham was so unwise as to run his finger around the inside of his collar and utter the lamentation:
"By Jove, Aggie, it _is_ hot in these rooms." She transfixed him with a stare.
"I find it delightfully cool, George." She called him George only when it was impossible to call him just what she wanted to.
The tea things did not come in; in their stead came pretty Mrs. Browne.
She stood in the doorway, a pleading sincere smile on her face.
"Won"t you _please_ join Mr. Browne and me in that dear little garden?
It"s so cool up there and it must be dreadfully warm here. Really, you should move at once into Mr. Wyckholme"s old apartments across the court from ours. They are splendid. But, now _do_ come and have tea with us."
Whether it was the English love of tea or the American girl"s method of making it, I do not know, but I am able to record the fact that Lord and Lady Deppingham hesitated ever so briefly and--fell.
"Extraordinary, Browne," said Deppingham, half an hour later. "What wonders you chaps can perform."
"Ho, ho!" laughed Browne. "We only strive to land on our feet, that"s all. Another cigarette, Lady Deppingham?"
"Thank you. They are delicious. Where do you get them, Mr. Browne?"
"From the housekeeper. Your grandfather brought them over from London.
My grandfather stored them away."
CHAPTER VIII