They understood then, and for the first time, what she was driving at, and rushed past her into the stable—into what had once been designed for a coachman’s bedroom—to find an apartment literally reeking with the fumes that poured out from a charcoal furnace on the floor, and beside that the body of a man—inert, crumpled up, fast sinking into that hopeless state of unconsciousness which precedes asphyxiation by charcoal.
In the winking of an eye Cleek had caught up the deadly little firebrick furnace and sent it crashing through the plugged-up window into the grounds behind, letting a current of pure air rush through the place; then, while Narkom, with one hand over his mouth and nostrils, and the other swinging a pair of handcuffs by their chain, was doing a like thing with another window in the front wall, he gathered up the semi-conscious man, swung him sacklike over his shoulder, carried him out into the roadway, and propped him up against the side of the stable, while he chafed his hands and smacked his cheeks and, between times, fanned him with his hatbrim and swore at him for a “weak-backed, marrowless thing to call itself a man, and yet go in for the poltroon’s trick of suicide!”
The woman was still there, squeezing her hands and sobbing hysterically, but although she had not as yet uncovered her face, it did not need that to attest the fact that she was no Hindu, but white like the man she had spoken of as her husband, and at the very first words she uttered when she saw that he was beyond danger, both Cleek and Narkom knew them for what they were—Sir Mawson and Lady Leake.
“Mawson, how could you!” she said reproachfully, going to him the very instant he was able to get on his feet, and folding him to her in an agonized embrace. “I suspected it when you left the house—but, oh, how could you?”
“I don’t know,” he made answer, somewhat shamefacedly yet with a note of agony in his voice that made one pity him in spite of all. “But it seemed too horrible a disgrace to be lived through. And now I shall have to face it! Oh, my God, Ada, it is too much to ask a man to bear! They are there, on guard, those Hindus, protecting me and mine until the Ranee’s steward comes to receive the Ladder of Light, as promised, at——”
“Sh-h!” she struck in warningly, remembering the presence of the others, and clapping her hand over his mouth to stay any further admission; for she had heard Cleek repeat after her husband—but with a soft significant whistle—“The Ladder of Light!” and supplement that with, “Well, I’m dashed!” and turned round on him instantly with a forced smile upon her lips but the look of terror still lingering in her fast-winking eyes.
“It is rude of me, gentlemen, to forget to thank you for your kind assistance, and I ask your forgiveness,” she said. “I owe you many, many thanks and I am endeavouring to express them. But as this is merely a little family affair I am sure you will understand.”
It was a polite dismissal. Narkom pivoted his little fat body on his heel, and prepared to take it. Cleek didn’t.
“Your pardon, but the Ladder of Light can never be regarded as a family affair in any English household whatsoever,” he said, blandly. “I can give you its exact history if you wish it. It is a necklace said to have once been the property of the Queen of Sheba and worn by her at the court of King Solomon. It is made up of twelve magnificent steel-white diamonds, cut semi-square, and each weighing twenty-eight and one half carats. They are joined together by slender gold links fitting into minute holes pierced through the edge of each stone. It is valued at one million pounds sterling and is the property of the Ranee of Jhang, who prizes it above all other of her marvellous and priceless jewels. She is not a pleasant old lady to cross, the Ranee. She would be a shrieking devil if anything were to happen to that necklace, your ladyship.”
She had been slowly shrinking from him as the history of the Ladder of Light proceeded; now she leaned back against her husband, full of surprise and despairing terror, and stared and stared in a silence that was only broken by little fluttering breaths of alarm.