For quite a minute she paced the floor, wringing her hands. Then there was a rap on the glass of the long window, and the tall, dusky, white-clad Jowar stepped into the room. His expression was unusually grave.
"The mem-sahib is mistaken," he said. "The fleeing sahib goes the other way. He is wounded. We follow the sahib until we see him enter the compound of the hotel. All the way the sahib leave trail of blood behind."
Nina had halted, her hand clutching a curtain as if to stay herself. At the words of the khitmatgar she swayed, and but for Andrews would have fallen, for the curtain stuff broke from its rings under her weight.
It was her companion who signed to Jowar that he might go. Then he supported her to a settee and eased her down upon it.
The cantonment at Umballa, which is four miles from the native town, boasts several hotels.
In a large upper room in one of these, not far from the bungalow of the Darlings, a burly, bearded gentleman – who had registered a few hours before as Henry Scripps, of Bombay – was at that moment impatiently and in no little pain awaiting the appearance of the English surgeon who lived nearest.
Around Mr. Scripps's left wrist was an improvised tourniquet, and the water which filled the basin on the wash-stand was claret-colored.
Mr. Scripps had just succeeded in filling a brier pipe with his right hand unaided, and was in the act of striking a match when his room door was swung hurriedly ajar to admit Mayhan, of the Buff Hussars, with his kit of surgical instruments.
"You've taken the devil's own time it appears to me," growled Mr. Scripps. "Now you're here, for God's sake, make haste!"
The greeting took the young surgeon somewhat aback.
"Sorry you think so," he returned, leisurely opening his bag and pretending that the catch had caught by way of retaliation. "As a matter of fact, I came on the instant."
Scripps rumbled under his breath and emitted a volume of gray smoke.
"Shot in the hand, I understand," Mayhan went on, wrenching the bag open at length with considerable fuss and feather.
Scripps grunted an affirmative.
"How did it happen?" the surgeon inquired, taking out a probe.
But the wounded man didn't answer. He dropped into a chair under the light and said: "Come now, make haste."
Mayhan emptied the blood-stained water from the basin, poured some fresh, and mixed an antiseptic in solution. Then he began cleaning the wound.
"Rather nasty, that," he commented. "The bullet has dug in here between the two outer metacarpal bones, and I'm not sure it hasn't shattered the trapezium."
"Get it out," cried Scripps impatiently, "and talk about it afterward. I'll grant you know the anatomy of the hand and the name of every bone in it. That's about the first thing you're taught."
Mayhan gritted his teeth. The man was certainly a boor. Still there was perhaps provocation in the pain he was suffering. Nevertheless, the surgeon rather enjoyed the probing. He knew how he was hurting, yet his victim wouldn't give him the satisfaction of wincing.
He drew it out at last and held it up to the light.
"I know that," he said, inspecting it. "A forty-five of the sort they use in those new American automatics. Has yours the new safety device?"
Scripps's teeth let go his lip long enough to growl: "No! That was the devil of it!"
As the young surgeon proceeded with his work of cleansing he continued to chatter:
"I was hoping it had. I wanted to see it. Colonel Darling was speaking of it last night at the club. There's a friend of his here – a young fellow named Andrews, from over on the Bombay side – who has one. He's promised Darling to show it him."
Scripps was pale from pain, but his grit was indomitable. He choked back a groan and said:
"Darling? Colonel Darling? I think I know him."
"I dare say."
Scripps relapsed into silence again. The wound still hurt abominably.
"Darling distinguished himself at Spion Kop, you know," Mayhan gave tribute as he unwound some iodoform gauze. "Fine chap, the colonel."
But his patient only grunted.
"Same man you know?" the other pressed.
Scripps nodded.
"I'll mention you're here."
There was no reply.
"Know him well?" inquired the surgeon guardedly.
Scripps had his lip in his teeth again, and it was bleeding; but he let it go.
"Better than he knows me, apparently," he said with a grim smile.
"He'll remember your name, I suppose?"
"I'm sure he won't. He won't know who Scripps is from Adam."
Mayhan, mollified now in a measure by the man's fortitude, used the cocain that he had denied him at first and proceeded with the dressing.
"If you're so keen on telling the colonel, just say you've seen Nibbetts," the brusk one suggested.
"Nibbetts?"
"Yes. He'll know then."
"I'll remember. I'll probably see him to-night at the club. He may look you up at once, if you don't mind. Fine fellow, the colonel."
The relief from the cocain was instantaneous, but Scripps's manner showed no change.
"That's twice you said that," he rumbled. "There are some that don't agree with you."
"I know," returned Mayhan. "Some never agree with any one. That's where the word disagreeable comes from."
Scripps made no retort, and the dressing continued in silence. When it was finished and Mayhan was repacking his kit, he ventured: "Nibbetts, you said, didn't you?"
The merest movement of the tawny, leonine head gave assent.
"I'll tell him." And then the surgeon took a closer look. Scripps's bearded chin was on his breast. His face, in spite of its tan, was deathly white. "By the way," he added, "you'd better have a brandy peg. You've lost some blood, you know, and – "
"That's my business," the other interrupted roughly. "You're a sawbones, not a medical man. And a sawbones sans merci, at that. Otherwise you'd have begun with the cocain, instead of ending with it."
Mayhan turned away without another word and made a wry face behind the savage's back. Two minutes later he was down the stairs and in the hotel porch, where he was confronted by young Andrews.
"I saw you go in," lied the latter nervously. "And I've been waiting for you. What happened? I've a reason for asking."
The young surgeon, whose faculty for putting two and two together was as acute as the next man's, sensed the reason at once.
"He won't die," he answered – "if that's what you want to know."
"Who won't die?" Andrews came back evasively. He had volunteered to get what information he could for Mrs. Darling, and he was distinctly uncomfortable under the attitude taken by this man whom he had started to question.
"The boor upstairs who got in the way of someone's forty-five-caliber automatic. It wasn't by any chance yours, I suppose?"
The blood rushed to Andrews's face, but in the dim light of the porch it is probable that Mayhan failed to observe it.
"I don't indulge in indiscriminate pistol practice," he defended weakly. "I heard a man had been wounded and came in here, and I strolled over to inquire out of idle curiosity."
"He won't die," said Mayhan again, and prepared to move away.
"But who is he?" asked Andrews, following a step.
"The most insufferable beast I've met in years – name of Scripps."
"Army man?"
"No;