"I know it. My emotions are all reversed. I'd give anything to be like other women; but I can't be."
Kneedrock was smiling incredulously. "You fool yourself, I believe," he said, "just as you fool others. You are an odd creature."
He looked at his watch and sat down on one end of the settee. She was already occupying the other.
"Jack's going away in the morning," she told him; "to be gone a month. Why don't you stay?"
"Because I mean never to give you a chance to make a fool of me again. Now you have the truth of it."
"He's off on a shooting trip."
"I wonder he doesn't shoot himself, poor beggar."
"That's the only goodness he could do me that I'd appreciate," she said with a light laugh.
Kneedrock's hulking shoulders gave a clumsy shrug.
"You ought to be flayed," he declared.
She was silent for a brief moment. Then she said: "Hadn't I better tell Jack you are here? The khitmatgar will if I don't; and I've no desire to add to the sins I should be flayed for."
"I suppose it would only be civil. Though I'm not keen on seeing him again," was the answer. "I'd no notion he was at home."
Nina stood. "He's in the gun-room. I sha'n't be a moment." And she was gone.
The seconds ticked into a minute and she was not back. Two, three, five minutes followed without bringing her. Kneedrock's time was slipping away, and he had none too much to spare.
In some impatience he got to his feet and sauntered across the room. Then, seeing the bronze cobra, which was not altogether unfamiliar, he stooped interestedly to examine it; and he found the bullet-mark.
But still Nina remained absent. To miss his train meant to miss his boat. Yet he felt that he could not go without at least a final word. He would, he must, therefore, make an effort to find her.
The door through which she had gone stood open before him. Of the plan of the bungalow he knew nothing; but he left the room and turned in haste down a dim-lit passage.
It may have been a few seconds later or it may have been minutes – Kneedrock swore afterward that it was at that very instant – that Jowar, the khitmatgar, busy in his pantry cleaning silver, was startled by a muffled detonation that shook the frail dwelling as might an earthquake.
He had been bent over his work; but the report brought him to the upright with a jerk. The soup tureen he was handling turned over and rolled to the floor. For the briefest moment he stood dazed, irresolute.
Then, kicking the tureen aside, he shot out of the pantry, ran through the dining-room, the drawing-room, the passage – all empty – until he came of a sudden to the open door of the gun-room, against the jamb of which, pressed close, with pallid face and wide, wild eyes, was Mrs. Darling.
Above her head rolled a little cloud of gray smoke. In his nostrils was the acrid smell of gunpowder.
In the room Lord Kneedrock was on his knees, and Jowar's first impression, as he gave it at the investigation, was that it was he who had been injured. On the floor beside him lay a double-barrel shot-gun, which the khitmatgar picked up. And as he stooped to do this he saw that over which the caller was bending.
Between a table and a chair, one leg gruesomely resting across a stool, stretched grimly stark and still the form of his master, Colonel Darling.
The head was in the table's shadow. But as Jowar drew closer he got sight of that which drove all the blood from beneath the dark pigment of his features. Whatever had happened it had made it impossible that he should ever look upon his master's face again.
There was no face there. It had been quite demolished.
At the same instant Kneedrock, sick at the sight, turned away to meet the khitmatgar's sinister gaze. Already it seemed the room was swarming with pressing, curious, excited native servants.
Nina had vanished, led away by her ayah. Later he learned that the gun found by Jowar had been examined. Both barrels were empty; but there was only one discharged shell.
The motor-car, waiting at the porch to take him to his train, was speeded for surgeons and medical men, as if, under the circumstances, there could be one faint ray of hope even. The garrison was advised, and the whole cantonment knew as if by magic.
Mr. Scripps, of course, couldn't go to Calcutta or anywhere else. He was as fast in Umballa as if there were chains on his hands and feet.
And it stood to reason, coming thus conspicuously before practically the whole British population, he could not hope to escape recognition.
Dinghal, the deputy commissioner, for instance, knew him at once as Viscount Kneedrock; and with Dinghal's fund of memory-stored fact and gossip, it was natural enough that he should put two and two together.
And when it is said that figures never lie, the sum of two and two is the exception that proves the rule. By adding these you can get about any result you choose.
Of Colonel Darling's tragic taking off there followed a rigid investigation.
The one person who knew the exact facts, or should have known them, was his widow. But Nina didn't and couldn't remember. The shock had wiped her memory as clean as a sponged slate.
For days she lay in a state between stupor and coma. When she came out of it she recalled that she had dreamed, but she couldn't remember the dream. It was awful, terrible, she knew that. But that was all she did know.
They had to tell her that Darling was hurt. She treated the tidings with indifference. Then they told her that he had been shot and that it wasn't certain how it happened. She thought he had gone on a shooting trip with Major Cumnock, and that the accident had happened in the jungle.
In the end they made her understand that he was dead; that his brains had been blown out in the bungalow gun-room, and that she was with him at the time. But she convinced them that she knew no more of it than she did of the fourth dimension, which was nothing at all.
Kneedrock, after frankly admitting his identity, swore to the facts as he knew them.
The native butler, Jowar, however, persistently contradicted him in one particular by averring that the viscount was in the gun-room when the shot was fired, as he himself was the first to enter it afterward, when he had found the Englishman bending over Darling's body and had picked up the gun which was lying at the viscount's right hand.
The word of a khitmatgar, however, had little weight against the sworn testimony of a British nobleman. The court agreed that death was the result of accident.
Those who knew certain matters which were aside from admissible evidence took the verdict with several grains of salt, and pointed out that in the matter of seeking motives for murder the authorities had been criminally remiss.
These knowing ones were about equally divided in opinion. The dissenting feminine element was inclined to believe that Mrs. Darling was the slayer. Whereas the doubting Thomases of the community would not put the responsibility past Kneedrock, who, they argued, had returned from hiding in a far corner of the globe, intent upon getting Jack Darling out of the way.
And for both of these views Dinghal, with his long tongue, innocent of venom still perhaps, but poisonous nevertheless – was largely responsible.
Young Andrews, risking everything, was still delaying his return to his post at Junnar. He simply must see Nina before going. He refused to abandon hope.
Once, after repulsing him, she had more than half-yielded. She had repulsed him a second time, it was true; and he did not overlook the significance of the return of Kneedrock, whom she had called her "match" and her "mate."
The odds were overwhelmingly against him. That he knew. But there might still be a chance. And he would make certain before – No, he questioned whether he could return to Junnar with that last hope gone. It might be that he – He didn't know. He wasn't going to face it until it was before him.
Then,