"Laila! Laila!"
There were two voices echoing the woman"s name, but only that one pistol-shot. Then two useless clicks of a trigger, before, with an oath, Roshan Khan flung the revolver from him and fled.
CHAPTER XX
TRAPPED
But that pistol-shot, as it pierced the hot, sultry air in the vaulted archways, was caught by a sudden blast of warm wind, sweeping G.o.d knows whence, to G.o.d knows where! and was blown out riverwards, citywards.
Blown by that sudden blast, like the hot breath of someone"s anger, which always heralds an electrical dust-storm. One moment there is the stillness of the uttermost void brooding over the deep; the next, causelessly, G.o.d knows why! the spirit moving palpably.
And so it is always when the ever-recurring struggle for the right road to that lost Paradise, for the right method of regaining that bartered birthright, begins afresh among the sons of Adam. When the Hosts of the Lord,--fighting, as men always fight, under the banner of Right, for what they think good and true, for what seems to them to bring them nearer to the golden gates--change armed peace for war.
It was so now; and Lance Carlyon, waking to the familiar, yet unfamiliar sound of that pistol-shot, woke also to the knowledge that someone had already resorted to that last argument between man and his fellow.
Who was it? And why?
As he stood, still half dazed by sleep, listening, as one does instinctively, for another shot to follow the first, a new sound distracted his attention.
Was he still asleep and dreaming? or was that really Erda Shepherd"s voice, rising towards him from the sliding, unseen river?
"I will come back to you directly," it said in Urdu. The half-heard promise of the words took him by storm, making him forget the strangeness of the language. Yet even that made his bewilderment more utter. And all around him, about him, a mist--or was it a cloud, or what was it?--had sprung into being. A wreath as of smoke drifted past the wide arches of the balcony, blotting out the pale shimmer of the young moon.
The swinging lamp above his head darkened, reddened, as the dust-atoms leapt from the earth into the air, obedient to the call of that mightiest force in nature which holds the world together, and guides it on its way among the stars.
Pidar Narayan had been right! The electrical storm had come!
But Erda had come with it. He could see her now, standing at the top of the river steps, dimmed by the dust-atoms that glittered faintly in the clouded ray of the lamp; could see her--tall, slim, white--with a red-gold ball in her hand.
So it was only a dream; he was asleep still!
The certainty of this, the knowledge that he would wake soon, made him yield to impulse, to emotion, as he would never have done otherwise. He held out his arms to the gracious vision, his voice rang with pa.s.sion.
"Erda! Erda! You have come back to me!--the world"s desire--my heart"s desire!"
And then, suddenly, his heart a-tremble for the first time, he drew back from his own fervour almost apologetically; for the scared look of the face seen through those earth-atoms had brought it home to him that this was no dream. This was Erda Shepherd herself, the woman who was the "_dearest atom of G.o.d"s earth_" to him. And she had come back, for what? Not to listen to his pa.s.sion, anyhow.
"What is the matter?" he asked briefly, sternly; for it came home to him also that the cause must be grave.
She gave a little shiver; the hearing of that first greeting had upset her calm, her courage, at last. Yet they had been firm till then; and, Heaven knows! the long hours of slipping through the rapids in the wake of that heaving, plunging ma.s.s of logs had been trying enough to anyone. Then for the last half hour, since Am-ma had cut the raft adrift to follow them at its leisure through the slacker currents, and, in obedience to her order, had forged ahead with his paddle, her anxiety had risen to fever-pitch; since the night, so far as she could judge, must be waning fast, and her errand would be useless if she were not in Eshwara before the dawn. For, as she had listened to Am-ma"s garrulous talk while he steered, the conviction had grown that the danger to peace and safety--if there was any--lay in the future, not in the past; that this dawn, and not yesterday"s, was to be the signal for the insensate, almost incredible attempt to wreck authority. An attempt which yet--incredible, insensate though it be--might bring death to--to one she held very dear.
She admitted so much now to herself, and, pulling that self together, looked that dear one in the face. "There is a good deal the matter,"
she said. "You had better call Captain Dering to hear it, too; it will save time."
He nodded acquiescence, but ere he left her, the instinct in him to guard his "_dearest atom_" to the uttermost from others, made him set a chair for her, and, glancing round for a wrap, take the mess jacket he had laid aside for a smoking coat, and fold it round her. For the air had grown suddenly chill, as it always does in a sand-storm.
"You must be cold in that dress," he said. As he did so the daintiness of it struck him, the scent of the orange blossoms made him turn pale.
Despite his hurry, his certainty that something serious was ahead, he paused to ask sharply: "That is your wedding dress, isn"t it?"--
"I am not married, if you mean that!" she answered as sharply. Then she flushed up angrily, more at the comprehension shown in her own answer than the meaning in his question, and burst out: "What does it matter if I am--or if it is? Go! I tell you, and call Captain Dering!"
Yet, when he was gone, she lay back in the chair and shivered again; all the more because of the unaccustomed touch about her throat of the gold lace on a mess jacket. How red it looked against her white dress!
And what a lot of little gold b.u.t.tons there were at its edge: foolish, useless, little ornamental gilt b.u.t.tons, round and red-gold, like--
The comparison brought back Lance"s cry of welcome, and made her realize that, quite mechanically, she still held in her hand that useless, foolish, unnecessary orange!
That, of course, was what had made him remember; had made him say those words which had come like the writing on the wall to remind her of her own guilt.
She flung the fruit from her, hastily, into the unseen river beyond the arches. Only just in time, ere Lance reentered, with a puzzled face.
"I can"t find Dering anywhere," he said vexedly. "He is not in his room. Hasn"t been to bed, either; though he turned in early saying he was half asleep. I wonder what is up? Can he have heard already, do you think? Scarcely; and he would not have gone without waking me." His surprise seemed to absorb him.
"Then I must tell _you_, for there is no time to be lost," interrupted Erda, impatiently. Yet, even in her strenuous desire to make him understand quickly, she did not fail to explain, breathlessly, how she came to be dressed as she was. She had been trying on her wedding dress to see if it fitted, and had gone into the garden for--for--flowers, when Am-ma and his raft had come floating down the river.
And was not that all true? she asked herself pa.s.sionately, as she told the tale. It was all of the truth, anyhow, that he or anyone else was ever to know.
So she had come to warn them, as she was.
A great joy at her courage filled Lance as he listened, for to most men the possibility of a woman acting as a man might act comes as a wonder.
"It was awfully plucky of you," he began; but she cut him short with a question as to what was to be done now.
"Warn Dillon, first of all," he said readily. "We have a wire laid on, you know. I only hope this infernal--I beg your pardon--dust-storm won"t interfere with the connection. You had better come over with me to the office; it is just across the yard, and I don"t like leaving you alone. Do you mind?"
"I"ll come, of course,--but I must make sure of Am-ma waiting first,"
she added, with a ring in her voice; the ring of a vigorous vitality which finds itself face to face with action. "He said the raft couldn"t overtake us for half an hour. But he must not go, anyhow, and he will want to. I had difficulty in getting him to leave it, as it was. But I had to make him. I had to be in time!"
"And you are--loads of time!" he called, as he ran down the river steps before her, to give the order. "It isn"t two o"clock yet, and--" he paused abruptly, on seeing, to his surprise, that only Am-ma"s strange craft lay sidling against the bottom step, over which little waves were curving hurriedly, to reach up the wall, as if the water-atoms were as restless as those of earth, as eager to seek a new element. For the air was growing darker, thicker every instant with the intruders. He looked round hastily, but there was no sign of the canoe anywhere. Yet he had seen it moored to its ring before dinner!
Vincent must have taken it. Whither? An answer leapt to Lance"s mind, and he flushed up, even in the dark, redly. If this was so--what the deuce was to be done?
There was an added confusion, an added responsibility in his face as he ran back to where Erda stood waiting him, and, catching up a lamp from the mess table, started with her close at his heels for the office.
"That is the first thing, anyhow!" he muttered, half to himself.
"Dillon must be warned--"
"And perhaps Captain Dering will be back by then," she suggested cheerfully, as, with the mess jacket worn as it should be for greater convenience of action and greater protection (she had slipped her arms into it, deliberately, while waiting for Lance), she followed in the little halo of dull, red light cast by the lamp through the dust-mist.
The courtyard was still without sign of life; for there was nothing to guard here. The ma.s.sive gates of the citadel once closed, and a sentry outside the wicket, there could be no fear of secret comings and goings.
"I hope to G.o.d he may," said Lance, ahead, and his tone made the girl wonder.
His face, too, surprised her, as, sitting down to the instrument, he signalled for attention. No doubt when time is an object, there must always be a sense of strain in that pause before the answering tinkle comes to tell that a human hand and brain is at the other end of the thin wire which means so much, but there was more than that in Lance Carlyon"s frown.
In truth, as he waited, he was not thinking so much of what would happen if the communication was interrupted, but what was to be done if it was not. Thinking that he must, somehow, warn Vincent. Thinking how awkward it would be for _him_ if there was a row, and he absent, as it were, without leave!