Queen Sheba's Ring Part 27

"Then he is an a.s.s!" interrupted Quick; "for the Abati have no grat.i.tude."

"He fears," went on j.a.phet, "other things also. For instance, that the Child of Kings may express that grat.i.tude by a mark of her signal favour toward one of you," and he stared at Orme, who turned his head aside.

"Now, the Prince is affianced to this great lady, whom he desires to wed for two reasons: First, because this marriage will make him the chief man amongst the Abati, and, secondly, because of late he has come to think that he loves her whom he is afraid that he may lose. So he has set a snare."

"What snare?" asked one of us, for j.a.phet paused.

"I don't know," answered j.a.phet, "and I do not think that my friend knew either, or, if he did, he would not tell me. But I understand the plot is that the Child of Kings is to be carried off to the Prince Joshua's castle at the other end of the lake, six hours' ride away, and there be forced to marry him at once."

"Indeed," said Orme, "and when is all this to happen?"

"I don't know, lord. I know nothing except what my friend told me, which I thought it right to communicate to you instantly. I asked him the time, however, and he said that he believed the date was fixed for one night after next Sabbath."

"Next Sabbath is five days hence, so that this matter does not seem to be very pressing," remarked Oliver with a sigh of relief. "Are you sure that you can trust your friend, j.a.phet?"

"No, lord, I am not sure, especially as I have always known him to be a liar. Still, I thought that I ought to tell you."

"Very kind of you, j.a.phet, but I wish that you had let me have my sleep out first. Now go down the line and see that all is right, then return and report."

j.a.phet saluted in his native fashion and went.

"What do you think of this story?" asked Oliver, as soon as he was out of hearing.

"All bosh," answered Higgs; "the place is full of talk and rumours, and this is one of them."

He paused and looked at me.

"Oh!" I said, "I agree with Higgs. If j.a.phet's friend had really anything to tell he would have told it in more detail. I daresay there are a good many things Joshua would like to do, but I expect he will stop there, at any rate, for the present. If you take my advice you will say nothing of the matter, especially to Maqueda."

"Then we are all agreed. But what are you thinking of, Sergeant?"

asked Oliver, addressing Quick, who stood in a corner of the room, lost apparently in contemplation of the floor.

"I, Captain," he replied, coming to attention. "Well, begging their pardon, I was thinking that I don't hold with these gentlemen, except in so far that I should say nothing of this job to our Lady, who has plenty to bother her just now, and won't need to be frightened as well. Still, there may be something in it, for though that j.a.phet is stupid, he's honest, and honest men sometimes get hold of the right end of the stick.

At least, he believes there is something, and that's what weighs with me."

"Well, if that's your opinion, what's best to be done Sergeant? I agree that the Child of Kings should not be told, and I shan't leave this place till after ten o'clock to-night at the earliest, if we stick to our plans, as we had better do, for all that stuff in the tunnel wants a little time to settle, and for other reasons. What are you drawing there?" and he pointed to the floor, in the dust of which Quick was tracing something with his finger.

"A plan of our Lady's private rooms, Captain. She told you she was going to rest at sundown, didn't she, or earlier, for she was up most of last night, and wanted to get a few hours' sleep before--something happens.

Well, her bed-chamber is there, isn't it? and another before it, in which her maids sleep, and nothing behind except a high wall and a ditch which cannot be climbed."

"That's quite true," interrupted Higgs. "I got leave to make a plan of the palace, only there is a pa.s.sage six feet wide and twenty long leading from the guard chamber to the ladies' anteroom."

"Just so, Professor, and that pa.s.sage has a turn in it, if I remember right, so that two well-armed men could hold it against quite a lot.

Supposing now that you and I, Professor, should go and take a nap in that guard-room, which will be empty, for the watch is set at the palace gate. We shan't be wanted here, since if the Captain can't touch off that mine, no one can, with the Doctor to help him just in case anything goes wrong, and j.a.phet guarding the line. I daresay there's nothing in this yarn, but who knows? There might be, and then we should blame ourselves. What do you say, Professor?"

"I? Oh, I'll do anything you wish, though I should rather have liked to climb the cliff and watch what happens."

"You'd see nothing, Higgs," interrupted Oliver, "except perhaps the reflection of a flash in the sky; so, if you don't mind, I wish you would go with the Sergeant. Somehow, although I am quite certain that we ought not to alarm Maqueda, I am not easy about her, and if you two fellows were there, I should know she was all right, and it would be a weight off my mind."

"That settles it," said Higgs; "we'll be off presently. Look here, give us that portable telephone, which is of no use anywhere else now. The wire will reach to the palace, and if the machine works all right we can talk to you and tell each other how things are going on."

Ten minutes later they had made their preparations. Quick stepped up to Oliver and stood at attention, saying:

"Ready to march. Any more orders, Captain?"

"I think not, Sergeant," he answered, lifting his eyes from the little batteries that he was watching as though they were live things. "You know the arrangements. At ten o'clock--that is about two hours hence--I touch this switch. Whatever happens it must not be done before, for fear lest the Doctor's son should not have left the idol, to say nothing of all the other poor beggars. The spies say that the marriage feast will not be celebrated until at least three hours after moonrise."

"And that's what I heard when I was a prisoner," interrupted Higgs.

"I daresay," answered Orme; "but it is always well to allow a margin in case the procession should be delayed, or something. So until ten o'clock I've got to stop where I am, and you may be sure, Doctor, that under no circ.u.mstances shall I fire the mine before that hour, as indeed you will be here to see. After that I can't say what will happen, but if we don't appear, you two had better come to look for us--in case of accidents, you know. Do your best at your end according to circ.u.mstances; the Doctor and I will do our best at ours. I think that is all, Sergeant. Report yourselves by the telephone if the wire is long enough and it will work, which I daresay it won't, and, anyway, look out for us about half-past ten. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye, Captain," answered Quick, then stretched out his hand, shook that of Orme, and without another word took his lamp and left the chamber.

An impulse prompted me to follow him, leaving Orme and Higgs discussing something before they parted. When he had walked about fifty yards in the awful silence of that vast underground town, of which the ruined tenements yawned on either side of us, the Sergeant stopped and said suddenly:

"You don't believe in presentiments, do you, Doctor?"

"Not a bit," I answered.

"Glad of it, Doctor. Still, I have got a bad one now, and it is that I shan't see the Captain or you any more."

"Then that's a poor look-out for us, Quick."

"No, Doctor, for me. I think you are both all right, and the Professor, too. It's my name they are calling up aloft, or so it seems to me. Well, I don't care much, for, though no saint, I have tried to do my duty, and if it is done, it's done. If it's written, it's got to come to pa.s.s, hasn't it? For everything is written down for us long before we begin, or so I've always thought. Still, I'll grieve to part from the Captain, seeing that I nursed him as a child, and I'd have liked to know him well out of this hole, and safely married to that sweet lady first, though I don't doubt that it will be so."

"Nonsense, Sergeant," I said sharply; "you are not yourself; all this work and anxiety has got on your nerves."

"As it well might, Doctor, not but I daresay that's true. Anyhow, if the other is the true thing, and you should all see old England again with some of the stuff in that dead-house, I've got three nieces living down at home whom you might remember. Don't say nothing of what I told you to the Captain till this night's game is played, seeing that it might upset him, and he'll need to keep cool up to ten o'clock, and afterwards too, perhaps. Only if we shouldn't meet again, say that Samuel Quick sent him his duty and G.o.d's blessing. And the same on yourself, Doctor, and your son, too. And now here comes the Professor, so good-bye."

A minute later they had left me, and I stood watching them until the two stars of light from their lanterns vanished into the blackness.

CHAPTER XVI

HARMAC COMES TO MUR

Slowly and in very bad spirits I retraced my steps to the old temple, following the line of the telephone wire which Higgs and Quick had unreeled as they went. In the Sergeant's prognostications of evil I had no particular belief, as they seemed to me to be born of the circ.u.mstances which surrounded us, and in different ways affected all our minds, even that of the buoyant Higgs.

To take my own case, for instance. Here I was about to a.s.sist in an act which for aught I knew might involve the destruction of my only son. It was true we believed that this was the night of his marriage at the town of Harmac, some miles away, and that the tale of our spies supported this information. But how could we be sure that the date, or the place of the ceremony, had not been changed at the last moment? Supposing, for instance, that it was held, not in the town, as arranged, but in the courts of the idol, and that the fearful activities of the fiery agent which we were about to wake to life should sweep the celebrants into nothingness.

The thought made me turn cold, and yet the deed must be done; Roderick must take his chance. And if all were well, and he escaped that danger, were there not worse behind? Think of him, a Christian man, the husband of a savage woman who worshipped a stone image with a lion's head, bound to her and her tribe, a state prisoner, trebly guarded, whom, so far as I could see, there would be no hope of rescuing. It was awful. Then there were other complications. If the plan succeeded and the idol was destroyed, my own belief was that the Fung must thereby be exasperated.

Evidently they knew some road into this stronghold. It would be used.

They would pour their thousands up it, a general ma.s.sacre would follow, of which, justly, we should be the first victims.

I reached the chamber where Oliver sat brooding alone, for j.a.phet was patrolling the line.

"I am not happy about Maqueda, Doctor," he said to me. "I am afraid there is something in that story. She wanted to be with us; indeed, she begged to be allowed to come almost with tears. But I wouldn't have it, since accidents may always happen; the vibration might shake in the roof or something; in fact, I don't think you should be here. Why don't you go away and leave me?"