"I don't care what it is," she said. "I don't care; I don't care about anything. Stand there, if you like, or come and sit here; but don't talk any more till we know what 's happened in there."
Sub-inspector Van Zyl coughed, but after certain hesitation, he made up his mind. When Mrs. Jakes came forth, tiptoe and pale but whisperingly exultant, she found them sitting side by side on the stairs in the attitude of amity, listening in strained silence for sounds that filtered through the door of the room. She was pressed and eager, with no faculty to spare for surprise.
"Splendid," she whispered. "Everything 's all right—thank God. But if it hadn't been for the doctor, well! I'm going to fetch the boys with the stretcher to carry him up to his room."
"I 'm awfully glad," said Van Zyl as she hurried away.
"So am I," said Margaret. "But I ought to have seen before the doctor did. I ought to have known—and I did know, really—that he would have taken you by the throat before then, if something hadn't happened to him."
She had risen, to go up the stairs to her room and now stood above him, looking down serenely upon him.
"Me by the throat," exclaimed Van Zyl, slightly shocked.
Margaret nodded.
"As Kamis would," she said slowly. "And choke you, and choke you, and choke you."
She went up then without looking back, leaving him standing in the hall, baffled and outraged.