“Stay over here to-night,” said Stratford, moved by a sudden impulse. “We can manage to put you up in Bachelors’ Buildings, and it will be more convenient if you are really seedy. Besides, it is undoubtedly bad policy for one of us to sleep out in an isolated house at a time like this.”
“My dear Stratford, I have a rifle and a revolver and a whole armoury of surgical knives with which to defend my hearth and home. Any midnight marauder who came to pay me a visit would find that he had undertaken a tough job. Moreover, my servants are good fellows, and they are armed after a fashion. And then I have the famous collection, with the reputation Anstruther has conferred upon it, to protect me. Good-night: I am really too thirsty to wait talking any longer.”
They unbarred the gate and let him out, watched him cross the street and knock at his own door, and saw him admitted. Then, after going the round of the sentries, they retired to their own quarters, where they spent some time in conversation. Before turning in, they went out to the gate once more, impelled by a common anxiety for which they made no attempt to account to one another, and looked across at the doctor’s house; but the door was shut, and all was quiet there.
CHAPTER XI.
THE RANKS ARE THINNED.
“Mr Stratford! Mr Stratford!”
The words were accompanied by an emphatic knocking at the door, and Stratford sat up in bed.
“Come in!” he shouted, recognising the voice, and Fitz Anstruther entered, shutting the door carefully behind him.
“I’m afraid there’s something wrong over at the doctor’s,” he said. “His house-door is ajar, and yet none of his people seem to be stirring. I wanted to go over and see what was the matter, but old Ismail Bakhsh wouldn’t let me pass out of the gate, and told me to call you and Major North. May I go now? I won’t be a minute.”
“No, call North, and he and I will go over,” said Stratford, beginning to dress, and Fitz, with a sense of deep disappointment, obeyed. In a very few minutes Stratford and Dick came down the steps together, and after posting Fitz at the gate in case a hurried return should be necessary, passed between the lounging forms of the Ethiopian soldiers who were occupying the street, and entered the doctor’s house. Its air of desolation surprised them, for they found the courtyard and verandah strewn with books and papers, and odds and ends of small value.
“Looks as though the place had been looted,” said Dick.