Some one found me a restless field-artillery horse which was giving the gunners a lot of trouble, and I rode back to Oadpur alone—not having any business at the front. As I approached the old Gate House, the flutter of a white dress caught my eye. It was almost dawn, and a pink haze hung over the paddy-fields. The world had that appearance of peace and cleanliness which is left by the passage of an Indian night. My rooms were on the ground-floor, and it seemed to me that, at the sound of my horse's feet, some one had come out of them to pass up the stone stairs that led to Graham's quarters. As I slipped out of the saddle the sound of a distant cannon broke the silence of the night, and my horse, despite his forty miles accomplished in little more than five hours, pricked up his ears. I tied him up, and instead of going to my own rooms went upstairs.
Miss Watson was standing in the first room I entered. The quick tropic dawn had come, and I saw the face of a woman who had not slept.
“Major Graham's servant told me that he was ill. I have—a—a right to know how he is, and where he is,” she said with her imperturbable self-possession.
“Graham is at the front,” I answered, and the sound of the cannon, dull and distant, finished the sentence for me.
Bertha Watson bit her lip to hide its quivering, and looked at me, breathing hard.
“We have rung up the curtain,” I added, remembering our talk in the verandah of the Residency.
“How did he get there?”
“Across my saddle in a state of insensibility, which passed off, as I expected it would, an hour before the time fixed for the storming of the fortifications. Some one drugged him in order that he might not take part in this action. Some one who feared him—or for him. Le Mesurier-Groselin called me to him, and only we three know of it. I am the only medical man connected with the affair, and I can certify that it was a native drug that was used, and that therefore a native must have done this thing. Probably a native spy, Miss Watson, who, finding out the proposed surprise too late to warn the rebels, attempted to disorganize the force by this means. Do you understand?”
She looked at me with all her keen wits in her eyes.
“No one would ever dream that another had done it—say some one who was attached to Graham, and who, in a panic, gave way to temptation and did him a great wrong, while saving him from danger.”