For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs. The message delivered to him in the forest of the River Dinder! It might mean nothing. It was the part of prudence to make light of his hopes and conjectures. But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was alone.
This was the Summons, the great Summons for which, without his knowledge, the experiences of his life, detail by detail, had builded him.
CHAPTER VIII
HILLYARD HEARS NEWS OF AN OLD FRIEND
At Khartum, however, disappointment awaited him. He was received without excitement by a young aide-de-camp at the Palace.
"I heard that you had come in last night. A good trip? Dine with me to-night and you shall show me your heads. The Governor-General"s in England."
"There"s a telegram."
"Oh yes. It came up to us from Cairo. Some one wanted to know where you were. They"ll know about it at Cairo. We just pushed it along, you know," said the aide-de-camp. He dined with Hillyard, admired his heads, arranged for his sleeping compartment, and a.s.sured him that the execution had gone off "very nicely" at Senga.
"Luttrell made a palaver, and his patent drop worked as well as anything in Pentonville, and every one went home cheered up and comfortable.
Luttrell"s a good man."
Thus Hillyard took the train to Wadi Haifa in a chastened mood.
Obviously the message was of very little, if indeed of any, importance.
A man can hardly swing up to extravagant hopes without dropping to sarcastic self-reproaches on his flightiness and vanity. He was not aware that the young aide-de-camp pushed aside some pressing work to make sure that he did go on the train; or that when the last carriage disappeared towards the great bridge, the aide-de-camp cried, "Well, that"s that," like a man who has discharged one task at all events of the many left to his supervision.
One consequence of Hillyard"s new humility was that he now loitered on his journey. He stayed a few days at a.s.souan and yet another few in Luxor, in spite of the heat, and reached Cairo in the beginning of June when the streets were thick with dust-storms and the Government had moved to Alexandria. Hillyard was in two minds whether to go straight home, but in the end he wandered down to the summer seat of government.
If Khartum had been chilly to the enthusiast, Alexandria was chillier.
It was civil and polite to Hillyard and made him a member of the Club.
But it was concerned with the government of Egypt, and gently allowed Hillyard to perceive it. Khartum had at all events stated "There is a cablegram." At Alexandria the statement became a question: "Is there a cablegram?" In the end a weary and indifferent gentleman unearthed it.
He did not show it to Hillyard, but held it in his hand and looked over the top of it and across a roll-top desk at the inquirer.
"Yes, yes. This seems to be what you are asking about. It is for us, you know"--this with a patient smile as Hillyard"s impatient hand reached out for it. "Do you know a man called Bendish--Paul Bendish?"
"Bendish?" cried Hillyard. "He was my tutor at Oxford."
"Ah! Then it does clearly refer to you. Bendish has a friend who needs your help in London."
Hillyard stared.
"Do you mean to say that I was sent for from the borders of Abyssinia because Bendish has a friend in London who wants my help?"
The indifferent gentleman stroked his chin.
"It certainly looks like it, doesn"t it? But I do hope that you didn"t cut your expedition short on that account." He looked remorsefully into Hillyard"s face. "In any case, the rainy season was coming on, wasn"t it?"
"Yes, my expedition was really ended when the message reached me,"
Hillyard was forced to admit.
"That"s good," said the indifferent gentleman, brightening. "You will see Bendish, of course, in England. By what ship do you sail? It"s not very pleasant here, is it?"
"I shall sail on the _Himalaya_ in a week"s time."
"Right!" said the official, and he nodded farewell and dipped his nose once more into his papers.
Hillyard walked to the door, conscious that he looked the fool he felt himself to be. But at the door he turned in a sort of exasperation.
"Can"t you tell me at all why Bendish"s friend wants my help?" he asked.
It was at this moment that the indifferent gentleman had the inspiration of his life.
"I haven"t an idea, Mr. Hillyard," he replied. "Perhaps he has got into difficulties in the writing of a revue."
The answer certainly drove Hillyard from the room without another word.
He stood outside the door purple with heat and indignation. Hillyard neither overrated nor decried his work. But to be dragged away from the buffalo and the reed-buck of the Dinder River in order to be told that he was a writer of revues. No! That was carrying a bad joke too far.
Hillyard stalked haughtily along the corridor towards the outer door, but not so fast but that a youth pa.s.sed him with a sheet of paper in his hand. The youth went into the room where Government cablegrams were coded. The sheet of paper which he held in his hand was inscribed with a message that Martin Hillyard would leave Alexandria in a week"s time on the s.s. _Himalaya_. And the message strangely enough was not addressed to Paul Bendish at all. It was headed, "For Commodore Graham.
Admiralty." The great Summons had in fact come, although Hillyard knew it not.
He travelled in consequence leisurely by sea. He started from Alexandria after half the month of June had gone, and he was thus in the Bay of Biscay on that historic morning of June the twenty-eighth, when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia d.u.c.h.ess of Hohenberg, were murdered in the streets of Saravejo. London, when he reached it, was a choir of a million voices not yet tuned to the ringing note of one. It was incredible that the storm, foreseen so often over the port wine, should really be bursting at last. Mediation will find a way. Not this time; the moment has been chosen. And what will England do? Ride safe in the calm centre of the hurricane? No ship ever did, and England won"t.
A few degenerate ones threw up their hands and cried that all was over--_they knew_.
Of these a gaunt-visaged man, stubborn and stupid and two generations back a German, held forth in the hall of Hillyard"s club.
"German organisation, German thoroughness and German brains--we are no match for them. The country"s thick with spies--wonderful men. Where shall _we_ find their equals?"
A sailor slipped across the hall and dropped into a chair by Hillyard"s side.
"You take no part in these discussions? The crackling of thorns--what?"
"I have been a long time away."
"Thought so," continued the sailor. "A man was inquiring for you yesterday--a man of the name of Graham."
Hillyard shook his head.
"I don"t know him."
"No, but he is a friend of a friend of yours."
Hillyard sat up in his chair. He had been four days in London, and the engrossing menace of those days had quite thrust from his recollections the telegram which had, as he thought, befooled him.
"The friend of mine is possibly Paul Bendish," he said stiffly.
"Think that was the name. Graham"s the man I am speaking of," and the sailor paused. "Commodore Graham," he added.
Hillyard"s indignation ebbed away. What if he had not been fooled? The quenched hopes kindled again in him. There was all this talk of war--alarums and excursions as the stage-directions had it. Service!