Part 33 (1/2)

'Horrid!' echoed Jack Raymond, in rather an odd tone of voice. 'Stand back, and let me close the door; there's no use in any one running the gauntlet of it.'

He had acted on the words before any one could raise an objection, and they could only hear his voice inarticulately from within.

'He's got the ghost!' cried Jerry triumphantly. 'I knew'd he was here.

I see'd him all along.'

'Seems a peaceable sort, anyhow,' remarked Jan-Ali-shan, as something like a faint whimper filtered through the closed door.

It was lighter now. The sky had paled. The shadows were turning grey.

That was perhaps why Jack Raymond's face showed so pale, and grey, and stern above his political uniform, as he came out, closed the door behind him, and, flinging down the lighted match he carried, trod it under foot.

'It s only a poor devil of a stowaway,' he said calmly. 'Been living here, I expect, some days. Ellison or Budlu, you'd better go and call the police. Stay, I'll give you a note. And Miss Drummond, it is high time that young ghost-hunter was out of the dew--and you also.'

Lesley looked at him with a new swiftness and light in her eyes. 'Dew!'

she echoed, 'there is no dew! I'm not a bit wet--feel that!' She walked deliberately up to where he stood, his back still against the door, and catching her long green sleeve in her hand, held it out.

'I'll take your word for it,' he answered lightly.

She did not move, but her eyes sought his.

'_C'est la peste, monsieur_,' she said in a low voice.

He looked at her for a second.

'_C'est la peste, mademoiselle_,' he replied with a bow.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE TOILS

On the evening after the ball, Chris Davenant sat in the pretty little drawing-room of which his wife was so proud, looking helplessly at Lala Ram Nath, who had come in on business. Yet the helplessness was not due, Chris felt, to anything in Ram Nath. It was due to himself, to his own actions. The feeling comes to most of us at times; for the story of the man-created monster which turns and rends its creator is as old as the world. It began with the serpent in Paradise, and will only end when humanity, by ceasing to desire that which it has not, ceases to put itself in the power of its own imaginings.

Ram Nath, however, had not reached this stage of development, and was still supremely satisfied with his creature. 'Surely it is out of the question,' he was saying in the fluent English which came from constant speechifying, 'that in the present crisis, when the eyes of all India are fixed on what we Nushaporites will tolerate, in the event of this plague epidemic supervening, and, alas! bringing in its train interferences with the liberty of the subjects beyond bearing even to the long-suffering races of India, that you should stand aloof from us, the recognised defenders of that liberty!'

Chris leant his head on his hand wearily. In truth he felt aloof from everything in G.o.d's round world, save that old man of the sea whom he had invited, under the name of civilisation, to sit on his shoulders.

'What have you decided on doing?' he asked indifferently.

'Doing?' echoed Ram Nath a trifle uneasily. 'So far as we ourselves--we, that is, who form the public opinion of India--are concerned, no definite action seems at present necessary; beyond, of course, the presenting of an unbroken front of opposition to the enemy.

At the same time there is much to be done on the sly; I mean'--he interrupted himself hastily at the false idiom--'unostentatiously, in order to gain the ma.s.s of the people to our side.'

'Yes,' a.s.sented Chris, 'you and I can afford to admit the truth, can't we?--that we are not much nearer to the hearts of the people than the English whom we ape.'

He spoke with a concentrated personal bitterness which brought greater hope and confidence into Ram Nath's persuasions. 'Undoubtedly.

Therefore our duty is palpable. We must seek every sympathy with them that we can legally find. For instance, their admirable desire for religious freedom, their touching devotion to the sanct.i.ty of home, their vehement defence of the modesty of their women. All these----'

'Are in the abstract,' put in Chris keenly. 'Let us deal with the concrete, please; it is safer.' He was roused now by pure love of argument; his intellect, to which he had sacrificed so much, had once more a.s.serted itself; the battle of mere words had made him forget his heartache.