Part 36 (2/2)

But no one challenged her, and she pa.s.sed on into the denser shadows of the church garden to regain her breath; for it had gone somehow.

Why, she knew not; she had not felt frightened. Then the question came, what next? Get to the magazine, somehow; but the strain of looking forward seemed far worse than the actual doing, so she went on without settling anything, save that she would avoid roads, and give the still smoking roofless bungalows as wide a birth as possible, lest, in the dark, she should come on some dead thing--a friend perhaps. And with the thought came that of Alice Gissing. The house lay right on her path to the magazine. Surely she must be near it now.

Was that the long sweep of its roof against the sky? If she could see so much, the moon must be rising, and she could have no time to lose.

As she crept along through the garden, she wondered why the bungalow had not been burned like the others. Perhaps the ayah's friends had saved it, or, perhaps, there had not been much to attract them in the little hired house. Or, perhaps----

Hark! She crouched back, from voices close beside her, and doubled a bit; but they seemed to follow her. And straight ahead the trees ended, and she must brave the open s.p.a.ce by the house itself; unless, indeed, she slipped by the row of servant's houses to the veranda, and so--through the rooms--gain the further side. Or she might hide in the house till these voices pa.s.sed, There they were again! She made a breathless dash for the shadow, ran on till she found the veranda, and deciding to hide for a time, pa.s.sed in at the first door--the door of the room where she had left Alice Gissing lying dead a few hours before. But it was too dark, as yet, to see if she lay there still, too dark to see even if the house had been plundered. It must have been, however, for the very floor-cloths were gone; the concrete struck cold to her feet. And a sudden terror at the darkness, the emptiness, coming over her, she pa.s.sed on rapidly to the faintly glimmering square of the further door, seen through the intervening rooms. There were three of them; bedroom, drawing room, dining room, set in a row in Indian fas.h.i.+on, all leading into each other, all opening on to the veranda; the two end ones opening also into the side veranda. She could get out again, therefore, by this further door. But it was bolted. She undid the bolts, only to find it hasped on the outside. A feeling of being trapped seized upon her. She ran to the other door. Hasped also. The drawing-room door? Firmer even than the others. But what a fool she was to feel so frightened, when she could always go out as she had come in when the voices had pa.s.sed. She stole back softly, knowing they must be just outside, and almost fancying, in her alarm, that she heard a step in the veranda. But there was the glimmering square of escape, open. No! shut too! shut from the outside.

Had they seen her and shut the door? And there, indeed, were footsteps! Loud footsteps and voices coming up the long flight of steps which led to the veranda from the road. Coming straight, and she locked in, helpless.

She threw up her hands involuntarily at a bright flash in the veranda.

Was it lightning? No! a pistol shot, a quick curse, a fall. A yell of rage, a rush of those feet upon the steps, and then another flash, another, and another! More curses and a confused clas.h.i.+ng! She stood as if turned to stone, listening. Hark! down the steps, surely, this time, another rush, a cry, a scuffle, a fall. Then, loud and unmistakable, a laugh! Then silence.

Merciful Heavens! what was it? What had happened? She shook at the door gently, but still there was silence. Then, gripping the woodwork, she tried to peer out. But she could only see the bit of veranda in front of her which, being latticed in and hung with creepers, was very dark. The rest was invisible from within. She leaned her ear on the gla.s.s and listened. Was that a faint breathing? ”Who's there?” she cried softly; but there was no answer. She sank down on the floor in sheer bewilderment and tried to think what to do, and after a time, a faint glimmer of the rising moon aiding her, she went round to every door and tried it again. All locked inside and out. And now she could see that the house had been pillaged to the uttermost. There was literally nothing left in it. Nothing to aid her fingers if she tried to open the doors. By breaking the upper panes of gla.s.s, of course, she could undo the top bolt, but how was she to reach the bottom ones behind the lower panels? And why? why had they been locked? Who had locked the one by which she had come in? What was there that needed protection in that empty house. Was there by chance someone else?

Then, suddenly, the remembrance of what she had left lying in the end room hours before came back to her. She had forgotten it utterly in her alarm and she crept back to see if Alice Gissing still kept her company. The bed was gone, but by the steadily growing glimmer of the moon she could see something lying on the floor in the very center of the room. Something strangely orderly, with a look of care and tidiness about it; but not white--and her dress had been white. Kate knelt down beside it and touched the still figure gently. What had it been covered with? Some sort of network, fine--silken--crimson. An officer's sash surely! And now her eyes becoming accustomed to what lay before them, and the light growing, she saw that the curly head rested on an officer's scarlet coat. The gold epaulettes were arranged neatly on either side the delicate ears so as not to touch them. Who had done this? Then that step she had thought she heard in the veranda must have been a real one. Someone must have been watching the dead woman.

She was at the door in an instant rapping at a pane, ”Herbert!

Herbert! are you there? Herbert! Herbert!” He might have done this thing. He might have come over from Meerut, for he had loved the dead woman, he had loved her dearly.

But there was no answer. Then wrapping the blanket round her hand she dashed it through the pane, and removing the gla.s.s, managed to crane out a little. She could see better so. Was that someone, or only a heap of clothes in the shadow of the corner by the inner wall? By this time the moonlight was s.h.i.+ning white on the orange-trees on the further side of the road. She could see beyond them to the garden, but nothing of the road itself, nothing of the steep flight of steps leading down to it; a bal.u.s.trade set with pots filling up all but the center arch prevented that.

”Herbert!” she cried again louder, ”is that you?” But there was not a sound.

G.o.d in heaven! who lay there? dying or dead? helplessness broke down her self-control at last, and she crept back into the room, back to the old companions.h.i.+p, crying miserably. Ah! she was so tired, so weary of it all. So glad to rest! A sense of real physical relief came to her body as, for the first time for long, long hours, she let her muscles slacken, and to her mind as she let herself cry on, like a child, forgetting the cause of grief in the grief itself. Forgetting even that after a time in sheer rest; so that the moon, when it had climbed high enough to peep in through the closed doors, found her asleep, her arms spread out over the crimson network, her head resting on what lay beneath it. But she slept dreamfully and once her voice rose in the quick anxious tones of those who talk in their sleep.

”Freddy! Freddy!” she called. ”Save Freddy, someone! Never mind, ayah!

He is only a boy, and the other, the other may----” Then her words merged into each other uncertainly, after the manner of dreamers, and she slept sounder.

Soundest of all, however, in the cool before the dawn; so that she did not wake with a stealthy foot in the side veranda, a stealthy hand on the hasp outside; did not wake even when Jim Douglas stood beside her, looking down vexedly on the blanket-shrouded figure pillowed on the body he came to seek. For he had been delayed by a thousand difficulties, and though the shallow grave was ready dug in the garden, the presence of this native--even though a woman, apparently--must make his task longer. Was it a woman? One hand on his revolver, he laid the other on the sleeper's shoulder. His touch brought Kate to her feet blindly, without a cry, to meet Fate.

”My G.o.d! Mrs. Erlton!” he cried, and she recognized his voice at once.

Fate indeed! His chance and hers. His chance and hers!

She stood half stupefied by her dreams, her waking; but he, after his nature, was ready in a second for action, and broke in on his own wondering questions impatiently. ”But we are losing time. Quick!

you must get to some safer place before dawn. Twist that blanket right--let me, please. That will do. Now, if you will follow close, I must get you hidden somewhere for to-day. It is too near dawn for anything else. Come!”

She put out her hand vaguely, as if to stave his swift decision away, and, looking in her face, he recognized that she must have time, that he must curb his own energy.

”Then it was you who fired,” she said in a dull voice. ”You who shut me in here? You who killed those voices. Why didn't you answer when I called, when I thought it was Herbert? It was very unkind--very unkind.”

He stared at her for a second, and then his hand went out and closed on hers firmly. ”Mrs. Erlton! I'm going to save you if I can. Come. I don't know what you're talking about, and there is no time for talk.

Come.”

So, hand in hand, they pa.s.sed into the side veranda, through which he had entered, and so, since the nearest way to the city lay down that flight of steps, to the front one.

”Take care,” he cried, half-stumbling himself, and forcing her to avoid something that lay huddled up against the wall. It was a dead man. And there, upon the steps which showed white as marble in the moonlight, were two others in a heap. A third lower down, ghastlier still, lying amid dark stains marring the whiteness, and with a gaping cut clearly visible on the shoulder.

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