"Fools, will you try to keep me from my father now that he has sent for me? Because he has not made his beneficent intentions known to you, will you deny them? Let him be told that I am here, and you will learn what is his will."
"Prince, your venerable father passed away in the night," said Gerrard laconically. The exact bearing of this new arrival upon the situation he could not determine, but he was very certain that it behoved him to walk warily. Sher Singh turned upon him a magnificent glance of anger and disdain.
"This is well done—very well done!" he exclaimed, while the councillors cowered before the meaning accents like reeds before a blast. "My lord and father proclaims his gracious willingness to lay the hand of forgiveness upon the brow of penitence, and in the few short hours before the feet of haste can carry me to the spot, he dies, and his intentions are unfulfilled."
"Were his intentions known to any besides yourself, Prince?" asked Gerrard, and noted that the eyes of the councillors sought Sher Singh's face, as though to inquire what he wished them to say. But he disregarded them.
"I understand that Jirad Sahib has enjoyed the honour of the Rajah's confidence of late, to the neglect of his tried and trusted councillors. Is it possible that nothing was said to him of my father's wishes?"
"They were communicated to me in great detail, but you, Prince, bore no part in them whatever." Gerrard weighed his words carefully, feeling that the time had come to throw down the gauntlet.
Sher Singh turned slowly to the councillors, and Gerrard noticed for the first time that the armed men who had accompanied him were crowding at the entrance of the tent. "I call you all to witness," said the Prince deliberately, "that this stranger, this encroaching Feringhee, who has supplanted my father's natural councillors in his confidence, desires now to supplant me also in my rights. Brothers, friends, when he thought he had attained the height of his evil desires, and learned too late that he had only opened the path for me, what did he do? My father made his final decision last night, when he despatched to me with a gracious message of favour the runner who had carried my humble petition. Before I can arrive, before he can announce his determination to the world, he dies. Who stands to profit by his death?"
Before the last words were out of Sher Singh's mouth, the tent was filled with the clash of weapons. The armed men in the entrance sprang forward at Gerrard, who believed that his last moment had come. But to his amazement a ring of bucklers encompassed him. The six Rajputs had remained when Kharrak Singh was taken away, and they stepped before him with ready swords. Baulked of the easy prey they had expected, Sher Singh's men hesitated, and the councillors flung themselves into the breach, weeping, clutching at the Prince's coat, urging in tremulous voices the impolicy of slaying a British envoy and thus bringing destruction upon Agpur. Sher Singh allowed himself to be turned from his immediate purpose.
"Let the Feringhee live for the present," he said, waving his followers back. "Speak, O Jirad Sahib, you who hide behind the servants of a woman, and tell me who stood to profit by my father's death?"
"You!" returned Gerrard promptly. "You, who have trumped up this story of a reconciliation, and come here to assert it now that he cannot contradict you. You, of whom your father spoke to me with aversion and absolute lack of forgiveness only last night. Tell me," he turned to the councillors, "when did this messenger of Kunwar Sher Singh's arrive—before my visit to his Highness, or after I had left him? You, O Sarfaraz Khan, as keeper of his Highness's head, must know all who entered or left his presence. When was it?"