"And we are going to think, my General," the Indian's voice purled on. "While we wait we shall think. Who will General Crandall be after to-night—the English sahib who ruled the Rock the night the English fleet was blown to hell from inside the fortress? How many widows will curse when they hear his name? What——"
"Jaimihr Khan, what have I ever done to you!" The governor's voice sounded hardly human. His face was blotched and purple.
"Not what you have done, my General—what the English army has done. An old score, General—thirty years old. My father—he was a prince in India—until this English army took away his throne to give it to a lying brother. The army—the English army—murdered my father when he tried to get it back—called it mutiny. Ah, yes, an old score; but by the breath of Allah, to-night shall see it paid!"
The man's eyes were glittering points of white-hot steel. All of his thin white teeth showed like a hound's.
"You dog!" The general feebly wagged his head at the Indian.
"Your dog, my General. Five years your dog, when I might have been a prince. My friend goes up the Rock—step—step—step. Closer—closer to the tower, my General. And Major Bishop—where is he? Ah, a knife is swift and makes no noise——"
"What a fool I've been!" Crandall rocked in his chair, and passed a trembling hand before his eyes. Sudden rage turned his bloodshot eyes to where the girl was stretched, sobbing, across the desk. "Your man—the man you protected—it is he who goes to the signal tower, girl!"
"No—no; it can't be," she whispered between the rackings of her throat.
"It is! Only a member of the signal service could gain admittance into the tower to-night. Besides—who was it went with Bishop down the Rock after the dinner to-night? And I—I sent Bishop with him—sent him to his death. He was tricking you all the time. I told you he was. I warned you he was playing with you—using you for his own rotten ends—using you to help kill forty thousand men!"
It needed not the sledge-hammer blows of the stricken Crandall to batter Jane Gerson's heart. She had read too clearly the full story Jaimihr Khan's sketchy comments had outlined. She knew now Captain Woodhouse, spy. The Indian was talking again, his words dropping as molten metal upon their raw souls.