Guns of the Gods Part 13

"I don't care for half-friends, Tom. If you expect to be welcome at my house you must come to my parties when I ask you."

"Lady, lady!"

"I mean it."

"Oh, very well. I'll come. I've protested. That absolves me. And my hide's thick. It takes more than just a snub or two--or three to knock my number down! Am I to bring Trotters?"

"Certainly. Trotters is my friend too. I count on him to do his tricks and help entertain."

"They'll say of you, ma'am, afterward that you don't know better than ask Tripe and his vulgar dog to meet nice people."

"They'll be right, Tom. I don't know better. I hope they'll say it to me, that's all."

But Tess discovered when the day came that no American can scandalize the English. They simply don't expect an American to know bow to behave, and Tom Tripe and his marvelous performing dog were accepted and approved of as sincerely as the real American ice-cream soda-- and forgotten as swiftly the morning following.

The commissioner was actually glad to meet Tripe in the circ.u.mstances.

If the man should suppose that because Sir Roland Samson and a judge of appeal engaged in a three-cornered conversation with him at a garden party, therefore either of them would speak to the maharajah's drill-master when next they should meet in public, he might guess again, that was all.

One of the things the commissioner asked Tripe was whether he was responsible for the mounting of palace guards--of course not improperly inquisitive about the maharajah's personal affairs but anxious to seem interested in the fellow's daily round, since just then one couldn't avoid him.

"In a manner, and after a fashion, yes, sir. I'm responsible that routine goes on regularly and that the men on duty know their business."

"Ah. Nothing like responsibility. Good for a man. Some try to avoid it, but it's good. So you look after the guard on all the palaces? The Princess Yasmini's too, eh? Well, well; I can imagine that might be nervous work. They say that young lady is--! Eh, Tripe?"

"I couldn't say, sir. My duties don't take me inside the palace."

"Now, now, Tripe! No use trying to look innocent! They tell me she's a handful and you encourage her!"

"Some folks don't care what they say, sir."

"If she should be in trouble I dare say, now, you'd be the man she'd apply to for help."

"I'd like to think that, sir."

"Might ask you to take a letter for instance, to me or his honor the judge here?"

The judge walked away. He did not care to be mixed up in intrigue, even hypothetically, and especially with a member of the lower orders.

"I'd do for her what I'd do for a daughter of my own, sir, neither more nor less."

"Quite so, Tripe. If she gave you a letter to bring to me, you'd bring it, eh?"

"Excepting barratry, the ten commandments, earthquake and the act of G.o.d, sir, yes."

"Without the maharajah knowing?"

"Without his highness knowing."

"You'd do that with a clear conscience, eh?"

Tom Tripe screwed his face up, puffed his cheeks, and struck a very military att.i.tude.

"A soldier's got no business with a conscience, sir. Conscience makes a man squeamish o' doing right for fear his wife's second cousin might tell the neighbors."

"Ha-ha! Very profoundly philosophic! I dare wager you've carried her letters at least a dozen times--now come."

Again Tom Tripe puffed out his cheeks and struck an att.i.tude.

"Men don't get hanged for murder, sir."

"For what, then?"

"Talking before and afterward!"

"Excellent! If only every one remembered that! Did it ever occur to you how the problem might be reversed ?"

"Sir?"

"There might one day be a letter for the Princess Yasmini that, as her friend, you ought to make sure should reach her."

"I'd take a letter from you to her, sir, if that's your meaning."

Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., looked properly shocked.

There are few things so appalling as the abruptness with which members of the lower orders divest diplomacy's kernel of its decorative outer sh.e.l.l.

"What I meant is--ah--" He set his monocle, and stared as if Tripe were an insect on a pin-point. "Since you admit you're in the business of intriguing for the princess, no doubt you carry letters to, as well as from her, and hold your tongue about that too?"

"If I should deliver letters they'd be secret or they'd have gone through the mail. I'd risk my job each time I did it. Would I risk it worse by talking?

Once the maharajah heard a whisper--"

"Well--I'll be careful not to drop a hint to his highness. As you say, it might imperil your job. And, ah--" (again the monocle,) "--the initials r. s.-- in small letters, not capitals, in the bottom left-hand corner of a small white envelope would--ah--you understand?--you'd see that she received it, eh?"

Tom Tripe bridled visibly. Neither the implied threat nor the proposal to make use of him without acknowledging the service afterward, escaped him. Samson, who believed among other things in keeping all inferiors thoroughly in their place decided on the instant to rub home the lesson while it smarted.

"You'd find it profitable. You'd be paid whatever the situation called for.

You needn't doubt that."

Tess, talking with a group of guests some little distance off, observed a look of battle in Tom Tripe's eye, and smiled two seconds later as the commissioner let fall his monocle. Two things she was certain of at once: Tom Tripe would tell her at the first opportunity exactly what had happened, and Samson would lie about it glibly if provoked. She promised herself she would provoke him. As a matter of fact Tom gave her two or three versions afterward of what his words had been, their grandeur increasing as imagination flourished in the comfortable warmth of confidence. But the first account came from a fresh memory:

"No money you'll ever touch would buy my dog's silence, let alone mine, sir! If you've a letter for the princess, send it along and I'll see she gets it. If she cares to answer it, I'll see the answer reaches you.

As for dropping hints to the maharajah about my doing little services for the princess,--a gentleman's a gentleman, and don't need instruction-- nor advice from me. If I was out of a job tomorrow I'd still be a man on two feet, to be met as such."

A man of indiscretion, and a diplomat, must have fireproof feelings.

As Tess had observed, Samson blenched distinctly, but he recovered in a second and put in practise some of that opportunism that was his secret pride, reflecting how a less finished diplomatist would have betrayed resentment at the snub from an inferior instead of affecting not to notice it at all. As a student of human nature he decided that Tom Tripe's pride was the point to take advantage of.

"You're the very man I can trust," he said. "I'm glad we have had this talk.

If ever you receive a small white envelope marked r. s. in the left-hand bottom corner, see that the princess gets it, and say nothing."

"Trust me, eh?" Tripe muttered as Samson walked away. "You never trusted your own mother without you had a secret hold over her. I wouldn't trust you that far!" He spat among the flowers, for Tom could not pretend to real garden-party manners. "And if she trusts you, letters or no letters, I'll eat my spurs and saber cold for breakfast."