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"You have not failed to watch him closely?" "As a cat watches a mouse." "But nothing?" "Nothing." "Yet I agree with you entirely, Shaik Tsin. I smell treachery." "And I." "Nogam shall go with me as my bodyservant. Thus I shall be able to keep an eye on him. Let Chou Nu be prepared to accompany us as maid to the girl Sofia.
The front of the house alone was dressed with a handful of English servants nominally under the man Nogam, but actually, like him, answerable in the last instance to Shaik Tsin. Why this should be Chou Nu couldn't say.
The tea service was already set out on a little table beside the fireplace in that room of secrets, whose normal atmosphere of brooding gloom was now the darker for the deepening dusk. Only the tea itself remained to be served, a special rite never performed in that household by hands more profane than those of the major-domo, Shaik Tsin himself.
Shaik Tsin bowed. "Make sure neither leaves his room to-night. Set a watch outside each door." "I have done so." Victor gave a sign of dismissal. In a spacious chamber beneath the eaves, hideously papered and furnished with cheerless, massive relics of the early Victorian era, the man Nogam pursued methodical preparations for bed.
This room is searched regularly by Shaik Tsin. So is Nogam's. It is certain there is neither a dictograph installed here nor any means at Nogam's disposal for connecting with a dictograph installation. Indeed, so closely is Nogam watched, and by more cunning eyes than mine sometimes I begin to be afraid he is simply what he seems." "Then you do suspect him!" "My good Sturm, I suspect everybody."
In the study of Prince Victor Vassilyevski the man Sturm put an impatient question: "Well? What you make of it hein?" Shaik Tsin looked up from a paper which he had been silently examining by the light of the brazen lamp. "Number One says," he reported, smiling sweetly, while his yellow forefinger moved from symbol to symbol of the picturesque writing: "The blow falls to-night.
"That would please you, to have her caught?" "Excellently." Shaik Tsin nodded in grave yet humorous comprehension. "Now I begin to understand. If she is caught, that gives you a power over her?" "Precisely." "And if she is not, when the robbery becomes known, your power over her will be still more strong?" "And over yet another stronger still." "The Lone Wolf?" Victor inclined his head.
For meself, I'm a fool if I go to bed this night sober enough to dream at all, at all!" Victor rang for Shaik Tsin to show him out. "One question more, if you won't take it amiss," Eleven suggested, lingering. And Victor inclined a gracious head. "Have you thought of failure?" "I have thought of everything." "Well, and if we do fail ?" "How, for example?"
"In hypnosis, in absolute suspense of every faculty and function save those concerned solely with the maintenance of existence in a state, that is, comparable only to the pre-natal life of a child." "It is most interesting," Shaik Tsin admitted. "But what is the use? That is what interests me." "Wait and see." Bending close to the girl, Victor called in a strong voice of command: "Sofia! Sofia!
Shaik Tsin beamed with friendliest sympathy Sturm turned to go, took three hurried steps toward the door, and felt himself jerked back by a silken cord which, descending from nowhere, looped his lean neck between chin and Adam's apple. His cry of protest was the last articulate sound he uttered.
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