Darna Singh closed a door that led from the front hall to the room, and, coming back to stand just across the desk from Foley, said: "The major sahib and the captain sahib are prisoners of Doctor Boelke; they are below in a cell—they will be killed."
In answer to a question, Darna Singh related how the two men had been captured and how he, not observed, had slipped away, and, knowing all the passages, had made his way to the stone steps that led from the tunnels to Doctor Boelke's bungalow.
Foley in his cold, unimpassioned voice asked: "What do you want me to do?"
"Save them."
The captain's eyes narrowed. "They are not friends of mine; they searched me to-day, and if I play this silly game I chuck in the sea two thousand quid. It's a damn tall order."
Darna Singh's voice throbbed with passionate feeling: "I am a rajput, sahib, and we look upon the sahibs as white rajputs. We may hate our conquerors, but we do not despise them as cowards. I never knew a sahib to leave a sahib to die; I never knew a rajput to leave a brother rajput to die."
Foley puffed at his cigar, and behind his set face went on the conflict the rajput's appeal to his manhood had stirred.
Darna Singh spoke again: "The sahib will not live to be branded a coward, for his eyes show he has courage. And we must hurry or it will be too late, for these two sahibs have risked their lives to save the British raj against Prince Ananda's, who is a traitor to the sahib's king; he is a traitor to his wife, the princess, for to-morrow he will force into the palace the white mem-sahib who is here with Doctor Boelke."
"By gad!" At last the cold gambler blood had warmed. His daughter Marie, eh? That was different! And to funk it—let two Englishmen die! One an Irishman, even! No doubt it was true, he reasoned, for that was why Darna Singh was in revolt against the prince.
"What chance have we got?" Foley asked.