Wargrave sprang into the room unarmed. He was outlined against the faint light outside. A spurt of flame lit the darkness; and the subaltern, as he tripped over the raised threshold, felt that he was shot. He staggered on. A rifle lunged forward and the bayonet stabbed him in the side; but with a desperate effort he closed with his unseen assailant and grappled fiercely with him. Struggling to overpower the assassin before his ebbing strength left him he fought madly. The Indian officers and sepoys blocking up the doorway could see nothing; but they could hear the choking gasps, the panting breaths, the muttered curses and the stamping feet of the combatants locked in the death-grapple. They could not interfere, they dared not fire. In impotent fury they shouted:
"Bring lamps! Bring lamps!"
Then, groaning in their powerlessness to aid their beloved officer, they listened, as a light danced over the stones from a lantern in the hand of a running sepoy. The moment it came and lit up the scene they rushed on the murderer wrestling fiercely with Wargrave and dragged him off as the subaltern collapsed and fell to the ground. The glare of the lantern shone on his white face.
"The sahib is dead!" cried a sepoy, and sprang at the murderer who was struggling in the grip of the two powerfully-built Indian officers. Others followed him, and his captors had to fight hard and use all their authority to keep the prisoner from being killed by the bare hands of his maddened comrades. Only the arrival of the armed men of the guard saved him.
Frenzied with grief the sepoys bent over their officer lying motionless and apparently dead on the stone floor. They loved him. Many of them wept openly and unashamed. The subhedar knelt beside him and opened his shirt. The blood had soaked through the white mess-jacket that Wargrave wore.
The native officer looked up into the ring of brown faces bent over him. Suddenly he cried angrily:
"Mahbub Khan, why hast thou not gone for the doctor sahib as thou wert told, O Son of an Owl?"
The face staring in horror between the heads of the sepoys was hurriedly withdrawn, and Mahbub Khan, who had lingered to see the end of the tragedy, turned and pushed his way out of the crowd.
Macdonald found the subaltern lying to all appearances dead on the broken door out in the open, where they had gently carried him.
"Hold a light here," he cried as he knelt down beside the body.