The Bronze Bell Part 28

"Are you in the habit of indulging in protracted silences?" she rallied him gently. "Between friends of old standing they're permissible, I believe, but----"

"A day's journey by tonga matures acquaintances.h.i.+ps wonderfully," he observed abstrusely.

"Indeed?" She laughed.

"At least, I hope so."

He felt that he must be making progress; thus far he had been no less inane than any average lover of the stage or fiction. And he wondered: was she laughing at him, softly, there in the shadows?

"You see," she said, amused at his relapse into reverie, "you're incurable and ungrateful. I'm trying my best to be attractive and interesting, and you won't pay me any attention whatever. There must be something on your mind. Is it this mysterious errand that brings you so unexpectedly to India--to Kuttarpur, Mr. Amber?"

"Yes," he answered truthfully.

"And you won't tell me?"

"I think I must," he said, bending forward.

There sounded a stealthy rustling in the shrubbery. The girl drew away and rose with a startled exclamation. With a bound, a man in native dress sped from the shadows and paused before them, panting.

Amber jumped up, overturning his chair, and instinctively feeling for the pistol that was with his travelling things, upstairs in the Residency.

The native rea.s.sured him with a swift, obsequious gesture. "Pardon, sahib, and yours, sahiba, if I have alarmed you, but I am come on an errand of haste, seeking him who is known as the Sahib David Amber."

"I am he. What do you want with me?"

"It is only this, that I have been commissioned to bear to you, sahib."

The man fumbled hurriedly in the folds of his surtout, darting quick glances of apprehension round the garden. Amber looked him over as closely as he could in the dim light, but found him wholly a stranger--merely a low-caste Hindu, counterpart of a million others to be encountered daily in the highways and bazaars of India. The Virginian's rising hope that he might prove to be Labertouche failed for want of encouragement; the intruder was of a stature the Englishman could by no means have counterfeited.

"From whom come you?" he demanded in the vernacular.

"Nay, a name that is unspoken harms none, sahib." The native produced a small, thin, flat package and thrust it into Amber's hands. "With permission, I go, sahib; it were unwise to linger----"

"There is no answer?"

"None, sahib." The man salaamed and strode away, seeming to melt soundlessly into the foliage.

For a minute Amber remained astare. The girl's voice alone roused him.

"I think you are a very interesting person, Mr. Amber," she said, resuming her chair.

"Well!... _I_ begin to think this a most uncommonly interesting country." He laughed uncertainly, turning the package over and over.

"Upon my word----! I haven't the least notion what this can be!"

"Why not bring it to the light, and find out?"

He a.s.sented meekly, having been perfectly candid in his a.s.sertion that he had no suspicion of what the packet might contain, and a moment later they stood beneath the window of the Residency, from which a broad shaft of light streamed out like vaporised gold.

Amber held the packet to the light; it was oblong, thin, stiff, covered with common paper, guiltless of superscription, and sealed with mucilage. He tore the covering, withdrew the enclosure, and heard the girl gasp with surprise. For himself, he was transfixed with consternation. His look wavered in dismay between the girl and the photograph in his hand--_her_ photograph, which had been stolen from him aboard the _Poonah_.

She extended her hand imperiously. "Give that to me, please, Mr.

Amber," she insisted. He surrendered it without a word. "Mr. Amber!"

she cried in a voice that quivered with wonder and resentment.

He faced her with a hang-dog air, feeling that now indeed had his case been made hopeless by this contretemps. "Confound Labertouche!" he cried in his ungrateful heart. "Confound his meddling mystery-mongering and hokus-pokus!"

"Well?" enquired the girl sharply.

"Yes, Miss Farrell." He could invent nothing else to say.

"You--you are going to explain, I presume."

He shook his head in despair. "No-o...."

"What!"

"I've no explanation whatever to make--that'd be adequate, I mean."

He saw that she was shaken by impatience. "I think," said she evenly--"I think you will find it best to let me judge of that. This is my photograph. How do you come to have it? What right have you to it?"

"I ... ah...." He stammered and paused, acutely conscious of the voices of the Englishmen, Farrell, Raikes, and young Clarkson, drifting out through the open window of the drawing-room. "If you'll be kind enough to return to our chairs," he said, "I'll try to make a satisfactory explanation. I'd rather not be overheard."

The girl doubted, was strongly inclined to refuse him; then, perhaps moved to compa.s.sion by his abject att.i.tude, she relented and agreed.

"Very well," she said, and retaining the picture moved swiftly before him into the shadowed garden. He lagged after her, inventing a hundred impracticable yarns. She found her chair and sat down with a manner of hauteur moderated by expectancy. He took his place beside her.

"Who sent you this photograph of me?" she began to cross-examine him.

"A friend."

"His name?"

"I'm sorry I can't tell you just now."

"Oh!... Why did he send it?"

"Because...." In his desperation it occurred to him to tell the truth--as much of it, at least, as his word to Rutton would permit.

"Because it's mine. My friend knew I had lost it."

"How could it have been yours? It was taken in London a year ago. I sent copies only to personal friends who, I know, would not give them away." She thought it over and added: "The Quains had no copy; it's quite impossible that one should have got to America."

"None the less," he maintained stubbornly, "it's mine, and I got it in America."

"I can hardly be expected to believe that."

"I'm sorry."

"You persist in saying that you got it in America?"

"I must."