'Hanky-panky!' remarked Jack Raymond again, 'but it can't do any harm.'
'No,' assented the doctor.
There was no one there to remind them that that is a formula which can never be safely used in India, or to repeat, as Grace Arbuthnot had repeated, a lifelong experience embodied in the words--'You can never tell.'
'They are a long time coming,' said the doctor aggrievedly. He was up to his eyes in work, and he had waited five minutes, ten minutes, patiently, silently. So had the crowd outside silently, but impatiently.
'Huzoor!' protested Lateefa from the door, 'to noble ladies it is as death----'
He broke off, for a sudden shriek rose from within; another; another; and above them a woman's voice shrill, awful, in its intensity of scorn--
'Lies! Lies! Lies! Stand back, fool, thief, liar!' And mixed with these words were others in agonised appeal--'Nay! Noormahal! Lateef? Help! God and his prophet! Thou shalt not! Noormahal!'
Lateefa seemed paralysed--uncertain what to do. But Jack Raymond, the doctor at his heels, had the door open. They were through it in a second. His first glance within, however, made the former grip the latter's arm with a grip of iron, and whisper breathlessly--
'Keep still, man; it's the only chance.'
For, in the centre of that inner courtyard, standing--arrested for a second by the opening of the door--on the parapet of the wide wall, was a tall white-robed figure, its face distorted by passion, its black eyes blazing.