"No, it can't be! Koda Bux, you are lying; no such horrible thing as that could be."
"My gods are not thine, if thou hast any, oh, unsainted one!" said Koda Bux, "but, like the gods of the Christians, they can avenge when the cup of sin is full. Yes, it is true. Your son and your daughter—your son, who is now married to her who should have been the wife of Vane Sahib. There is no doubt, and it can be proved. But that is only a part of your punishment, destroyer of happiness and afflictor of many lives. That is a thought which thou wilt take to Hell with thee, and it shall eat into thy soul for ever and ever, and when I have sent thee to Hell I will tell thy son and the woman he stole from Vane Sahib when he persuaded him to take strong drink that morning at the college of Oxford. Yes, I have heard it all. I, who am only a nigger! Dog and son of a dog, is not thy soul blacker than my skin? And now the hour has struck. Thy breath is already in thy mouth!"
Koda Bux snatched the handkerchief from his waist-band and began to creep towards him, his Beard and moustache bristling like the back of a tiger, and his big, fierce eyes gleaming red. Sir Reginald knew that if he once got within throwing distance of that fatal strip of silk he would be dead in an instant without a sound. He made a despairing spring for the bell-rope, grasped it, and dragged it from its connection.
At the same moment there was a peal at the hall bell, followed by a thunderous knocking. Enid, who was in the morning-room with her husband, saw a two-horsed carriage come up the drive at a gallop, and the moment it had stopped Vane jumped out and rang and knocked. Then out of the carriage came Sir Arthur and a lady whom she had never seen before, but whom Garthorne, looking over her shoulder out of the window, recognised only too quickly.
"What on earth can Sir Arthur and Vane have come for in such a hurry as that!" she exclaimed. "Why, it might be a matter of life and death, and only such a short time after dear old Koda Bux, too. What can be the matter, Reginald?"
But Garthorne had already left the room, his heart shaking with apprehension. He ran up into the hall to open the door before one of the servants could do it.
"Ah, Sir Arthur, Vane—and Miss Russell—I believe it is——"
"Yes, Mr. Garthorne," said Sir Arthur coldly but quickly, as they entered the hall. "We have come to stop a murder if we can. I hope we are in time. Where is your father, and has Koda Bux been here?"
"Koda Bux has been in the library with my father for about half-an-hour, I believe," said Reginald. "What is the matter?"
"It is a matter of life or death," answered Vane, looking at him with burning eyes and speaking with twitching lips. "Perhaps something worse even than that. Where are they?—quick, or we shall be too late!"