A light moved there—a clear round eye of light. Behind it was the faintest suggestion of a figure at the double doors—just a blur of white, it was; but it moved stealthily, swiftly. She heard a key turn in a lock. Then swiftly the eye of light traveled across the library to the door leading to General Crandall's room. There it paused to cut the handle of the door and keyhole beneath out of darkness. A brown hand slipped into the clear shaft of whiteness, put a key into the keyhole, and softly turned it. The same was done for the locks of Lady Crandall's door, on the opposite side of the library, and for the one Jane had just closed behind her—her own door. Than the circle of light, seeming to have an intelligence all its own, approached the desk, flew swiftly to a drawer and there paused. Once more the brown hand plunged into the bore of light; the drawer was carefully opened, and a steel-blue revolver reflected bright sparks from its barrel as it was withdrawn.
Jane, hardly daring to breathe, and with the heavy curtains gathered close so that only a space for her eyes was left open, watched the orb of light, fascinated. It groped under the desk, found a nest of slender wires. There was a "Snick—snick!" and the severed ends of the wires dropped to the floor. The burnished dial of the wall safe, set near the double doors, was the next object to come under the restless searching eye. While light poured steadily upon the circular bit of steel, delicate fingers played with it, twisting and turning this way and that. Then they were laid upon the handle of the safe door, and it swung noiselessly back. A tapering brown hand, white-sleeved, fumbled in a small drawer, withdrew a packet of papers and selected one.
Jane stepped boldly into the room.
"Sahibah!" The white club of the electric flash smote her full in the face.
"What are you doing at that safe, Jaimihr Khan?" Jane spoke as steadily as she could, though excitement had its fingers at her throat, and all her nerves were twittering. She heard some sharply whistled foreign word, which might have been a curse.
"Something that concerns you not at all, Sahibah," the Indian answered, his voice smooth as oil. He kept the light fair on her face.
"I intend that it shall concern me," the girl answered, taking a step forward.
"Veree, veree foolish, Sahibah!" Jaimihr whispered, and with catlike stride he advanced to meet her. "Veree foolish to come here at this time."
Jane, frozen with horror at the man's approach, dodged and ran swiftly to the fireplace, where hung the ancient vesper bell. The flash light followed her every move—picked out her hand as it swooped down to seize a heavy poker standing in its rack beside the bell.
"Sahibah! Do not strike that bell!" The warning came sharp and cold as frost. Her hand was poised over the bell, the heavy stub of the poker a very few inches away from the bell's flare.