Colonel Carmichael lifted his head. True enough, no living thing seemed to move. A profound hush hung in the air, broken only by Mrs. Cary's pitiful meanings.
"Oh, Beatrice, Beatrice, where are you?"
Geoffries turned his stained face to the Colonel's.
"Beatrice! That's Miss Cary, isn't it? Anything happened to her?"
Colonel Carmichael shrugged his shoulders with the impatience of a man whose nerves are overstrained by anxiety.
"I don't know—we've lost her," he said. "We must do something at once. Heaven alone knows what has happened."
No one indeed knew what had happened—not even the lonely man who waited, revolver in hand, for the final encounter on whose issue hung the fortunes of them all.
Only one knew, and that was Beatrice herself as she stood before the shattered doorway of the Colonel's drawing-room, amidst the debris of wrecked, shot-riddled furniture, face to face with Nehal Singh.