The Major gave an odd hollow laugh. "The other way on--I mean--I--I can't believe it--but my wife--she--she's alive--she's in Delhi." The startled faces around seemed too much for him; he sat down hurriedly and hid his face in his hands, only to look up in a second more collectedly. "It has brought the whole d----d business home, somehow, to have her there."
"But how?" the eager voices got so far--no further.
"I nearly shot him--should have if he had not ducked, for the get up was perfect. Some of you may know the man--Douglas--Greyman--a trainer chap, but my God! a well plucked one. He sneaked into my tent to tell. But I don't understand it yet, and he said he would come back and arrange. It was all so hurried, you see; I was due at the muster, and he was off when he heard what was up to see Graves--whom he knows. Oh, curse the whole lot of them! Here, khânsaman! brandy--anything!"
He gulped it down fiercely, for he had heard of more than life from Jim Douglas.
The latter, meanwhile, was racing down a ravine as his shortest way back to the city. His getting out had been the merest chance, depending on his finding Soma as sentry at the sally port of the ruined magazine. He had instantly risked the danger of another confederate for the opportunity, and he was just telling himself with a triumph of gladness that he had been right, when a curious sound like the rustling of dry leaves at his very feet, made him spring into the air and cross the flat shelf of rock he was passing at a bound; for he knew what the noise meant. A true lover's knot of deadly viper, angry at intrusion, lay there; the dry Ridge swarms with them. But, as he came down lightly on his feet again, something slipped from under one, and though he did not fall, he knew in a second that he was crippled. Break or sprain, he knew instantly that he could not hope to reach the sally-port before Soma's watch was up. Yet get back he must to the city; for this--he had tried a step by this time with the aid of a projecting rock--might make it impossible for him to return for days if he did the easiest thing and crawled upward again hands and knees. That, then, was not to be thought of. The Ajmere gate, however, might be open for traffic; the Delhi one certainly was, morning and evening. The latter meant a round of nearly four miles, and endless danger of discovery; but it must be done. So he set his face westward.
It was just twenty-four hours after this, that Tara, unable for longer patience, told Kate that she must lock herself in, while she went out to seek news of the master. Something must have happened. It was thirty-six hours since they had seen him, and if he was gone, that was an end.
Her face as she spoke was fierce, but Kate did not seem to care; she had, in truth, almost ceased to care for her own safety except for the sake of the man who had taken so much trouble about it. So she sat down quietly, resolved to open the locked door no more. They might break it in if they chose, or she could starve. What did it matter?
Tara meanwhile went, naturally, to seek Soma's aid, all other considerations fading before the master's safety; and so of course came instantly on the clew she sought. He had left the city, let out by Soma's own hands; hands which had never meant to let him in again, that being a different affair. And though he had said he would return, why should he? asked Soma. Whereupon Tara, to prove her ground for fear, told of the hidden mem. She would have told anything for the sake of the master. And Soma looked at her fierce face apprehensively.
"That is for after!" she said curtly, impatiently. "Now we must make sure he is not wounded. There was fighting to-day. Come, thou canst give the password and we can search before dawn if we take a light. That is the first thing."
But as, cresset in hand, Tara stooped over many a huddled heap or long, still stretch of limb, Kate, with a beating heart, was listening to the sound of someone on the stairs. The next moment she had flung the door wide at the first hint of the first familiar knock.