She could not forget the copy of the Pearl Scarf of Indore. It haunted her.... Pearls.... Chavigny, a thief of international notoriety.... Alan's pen was scratching steadily on in the next room. The odor of tobacco was comforting. It made her forget the jewels of Ind; conjured in her mind a picture of the great, pillared house at Bayou Latouche. And she was still thinking of Bayou Latouche, and hearing faintly the scratch-scratch of the pen, when she fell asleep.
5
Dana awakened with a start. Involuntarily she sat up in bed, staring drowsily about the room. It was buried in dusk. The moonlight, floating through the casement, crusted the floor with a band of pearl. As full consciousness wiped the threads of sleep from her brain, she wondered what had caused her sudden awakening. No noise, for silence shut down like a lid, made more intense by the sighing of trees beyond the stone terrace. The sounds of a clock on the dressing-table seemed to stitch the hush.
For a moment she sat there, vaguely uneasy; then swung her feet over the side and slipped them into bedroom sandals. Moving quietly to the dressing-table, she looked at the clock. After one.... Her sandals lisped on the floor as she crept to the window.
Delhi lay asleep in the breathless night. Temple, tower, dome and minaret swam in the moonlight, and in the jungle stretch by the river jackals were laughing hysterically. With a little shiver she returned to the bed.
Strange to awaken like this, she thought. The new surroundings probably. She sighed and settled deeper in the bed.
... She was almost asleep when a shadow flitted across her vision. At first it seemed a part of the slumber that had nearly overcome her, and she lay there contemplating the window-casement where it had passed until it was borne to her, suddenly, and not without a shock, that she was fully awake and the shadow was not a shadow, but a very substantial human form that had stolen by on the stone terrace. The realization drew her muscles rigid, and she lay motionless, listening to the hammering of her heart.
A faint scraping noise came from Alan's room. What was it, a footfall? An oblong reservoir of darkness outlined the doorway. She could see nothing.... She must move, must call her brother. But her body was locked in a temporary paralysis, her tongue dry.
Again the sound. Unmistakable. Some one was walking stealthily. The crackle of paper.
Her fright increased, swelled, became so acute that she could no longer endure it.