"Or against—your family?"
There was a slight hesitation in Stafford's manner. He frowned as a man does who has been pressed with an unpleasant question.
"That is more possible," he admitted.
Nehal Singh made no further remark. He stood staring straight ahead into the half-darkness, and every eye in that uneasy assembly fixed itself on his face, as though striving to read from his expression the conclusion to which his mind was groping. For his exclamation after Stafford's first announcement had betrayed that a sudden suspicion had flashed before him, and they waited for him to take them into his confidence. But they waited in vain. He seemed to have forgotten their existence, and the silence grew tense and painful. All at once, Mrs. Berry, who was clinging to her husband's arm, uttered a scream, which acted like a shock of electricity on the overstrained nerves of those who stood about her.
"Look! Look!" she cried. "Miss Caruthers is on fire! Oh, help! Help!"
She turned and rushed like a frightened sheep to the back of the hall, crying incoherent warnings to those who tried to bar her headlong flight. It was a catastrophe upon catastrophe. How it happened no one knew—possibly some half-extinct candle had done the work. In an instant Lois' white silk dress had become a sheet of flame which mounted with furious rapidity to her horror-stricken face. In such disasters it is only the question of a fraction of a second as to who recovers his wits first. Almost on the top of Mrs. Berry's heedless scream Beatrice had sprung toward the doomed girl—with what intention she hardly knew—but before she was in reach of danger Adam Nicholson thrust her to one side and, folding Lois in his arms, flung her to the ground.
"A rug—a shawl—anything!" he shouted.
Mrs. Carmichael tore the long wrap from her shoulders, and a dozen willing hands lent what assistance first occurred to them. But Nicholson fought his enemy alone.
"Stand back!" he commanded. "Stand back!"
They obeyed him instinctively, and stood helpless, watching the short, desperate struggle between life and death. Scarcely a moment elapsed before the flames died down—one last tight drawing together of Mrs. Carmichael's wrap, and they were extinct. Nicholson stumbled to his feet, the frail, unconscious burden in his arms.