The Cobra in the Corner
"My wife!" said Colonel Darling. And the way he said it was almost
reverential.
The tone struck young Andrews dumb. His chance had come again. He should
have said: "Yes? I had the pleasure of meeting her at Simla." But he
said nothing at all.
In dead silence he followed his host to the front veranda, where he came
plump upon Nina Darling and the Ramsays. That is to say, upon Mrs.
Ramsay, who was an American devotee of Kipling on a pilgrimage to the
shrines, and her daughter, Jane.
Mr. Ramsay, busy in Chicago or Milwaukee, or some other place in the
States, was not in evidence, and had not been.
It was clear to Andrews that Colonel Darling was about to greet his wife
with a kiss; but she forestalled it. She nodded to him perfunctorily;
said: "Oh, there you are, Jack!" in the most matter-of-fact fashion; and
turned away to stoop and caress the Irish terrier that was frantically
pawing at her skirt.
A lump rose in Andrews's throat at sight of the rebuff. His hope was
that the Ramsays hadn't noticed, for their eyes were on him at the
moment, and their surprise at seeing him there was manifest.
Darling made to cover up the awkward moment by presenting him all
around. Nina, whose astonishment at the meeting must have exceeded even
that of her friends, took refuge in the chilliest civility.
From nothing that she said could her husband possibly gather that she
and Andrews had so much as ever touched fingers before. And the Ramsays
were quick to follow her lead.
Nevertheless, the situation was far from comfortable, and the young man
got away at the very earliest opportunity.
Before he had reached the gate of the compound, however, the voice of
the colonel caught him up.
"I say, Andrews," he called, "don't forget to bring over that new
automatic pistol you were speaking of. I should like to have a look at
it if you don't mind."
And this eleventh-hour reminder gave him the excuse which later, in his
superconscientiousness, he deemed a necessity. More than ever now honor
and duty bade him flee; but a more insistent impulse urged another and
final talk with Nina.
For forty-eight hours he fought it, only to yield at the forty-ninth.
Having made sure that Darling was safely housed at the club, he rode
over to the bungalow with the excuse spoiling the set of his coat.
Nina saw it almost at once and spoke of it. For, the devil being good to
him, he had found her at home and alone.
"I knew your nose was out of joint," she said, "but what under the sun
has happened to your hip?"
"Oh, yes," he replied, taking the excuse from his hip-pocket and
placing it on a table close at hand. "I brought it over for the colonel.
He's rather keen about the new safety device and wanted to see it." And
he looked a trifle sheepish as he asked: "Does he happen by any chance
to be at home?"
"You may thank Heaven he isn't," she answered with a light laugh. "I'm
never at my best when he is within hailing distance. And you didn't come
to see him. I know that."
Then he looked more sheepish still.
"I dare say you've learned his habits in the last week, and you could
have found him at the club, you know," she added.
His laugh was rather mirthless as he said:
"Of course. What's the use of pretending? I saw him go in before I
started."
"Then you've forgiven me, I suppose. That is sweet of you."
"It's harder to forgive myself. I feel like a cur."
"I've known some very nice curs."
"But I don't feel like that sort," he insisted. "No, it's the sneaking,
thieving mongrel that I--" He broke off suddenly.
She had sat down and he dropped into a chair facing her.
"I'll tell you," he went on. "I've been persuading myself that I owed
you an explanation of my continued presence in Umballa and the narrowly
averted embarrassment of two days ago. I've been trying to make myself
believe that in that and that only lay my reason for wishing to see you
again."
"And there was another reason?"
"There was another reason," he admitted. "I wasn't honest with myself.
Gad! When a chap isn't honest with himself--"
"All men are like that," she told him. "The higher their ideals the less
frankly honest they are with themselves. They just won't admit the old
Adam in them."
"I haven't any will," he declared. "I haven't any pride."
She lay back in her chair, pleasantly amused.
"Of course you haven't," she said confidently. "I've taken them from
you. It was very wicked of me, wasn't it?"
"Do you do that to--to all of us?" he asked seriously.
"I'm afraid I do," she admitted. "But quite unconsciously. I don't mean
to. Oh, I never mean to."
"I've been trying to put you out of my mind, out of my heart. I've been
trying to kill my infatuation for you; but I haven't even stunned it.
When I thought I had my foot on its neck it went on binding me with
stronger chains."
And at that she laughed aloud.
"You're too funny," she said. "When did you think you had the horrid
thing down?"
"When I met your husband--and--and liked him."
"You did like him, then?"
"Very much indeed."
"What an odd taste! Those pale eyes of his have an uncanny effect on me.
It's something that goes through walls and floors; and it makes me quite
vicious. It brings out all the cat in me. I have an irresistible desire
to claw and rend."
"It must have followed you all the way to Simla, that last night," said
Andrews, dropping into a chair that faced her.
But Nina shook her golden head and her violet eyes slowly narrowed. He
observed that in the dusk, for the room was in the semi-gloom of a
single, red-shaded lamp in a far corner.
"No"--her voice was very low and purring--"I wasn't in the least catty
then. I was sorry for you. I was, really; but it couldn't go on. You can
see now that it couldn't go on."
"It might have gone on," he qualified, "if I hadn't met Colonel
Darling."
"You seem to forget that I had met him already--am married to him."
"Yes," he said; "but with you it's different. You joy in hurting him;
whereas I--why, I'd never have a moment's peace if I did anything that
would give him pain. I know I shouldn't."
She pretended to be surprised; though, for some reason, she was not in
the least.
"You're an odd boy," she drawled. "You mean that if I were to tell you
now that I had changed my mind, and was quite ready to go away with you,
you'd beg to be excused?"
He didn't answer at once. Candor bulked large in his character. Now that
she put it that way he wished to be very sure. It was not a matter to be
decided offhand, with Darling absent and Nina there before him,
temptingly precious in the magic witchery of the tinted half-light.
"No, I--I couldn't. I couldn't do him that injury," he declared at
length.
"And you swore you loved me?"
"I did. I do. I swear it still," he cried with sudden vehemence.
Nina laughed at his protestation.
"'Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more,'" she quoted.
"Is that it?"
"No, that isn't it," he denied earnestly. "I--"
"You love me a great deal, but you are so fond of Darling that you would
not pain him to make us both happy," she interrupted. And the sneer with
which she did it cut him to the quick.
"I don't think you've any right to put it that way," he returned.
"I am putting it your way, really," she came back. "It is as plain as
the nose on your face. You made the choice between us, and you took a
minute or so to make it. You didn't answer on impulse; you answered
after calm deliberation. I really don't see, Gerald, how you can argue
it otherwise."
"But it wouldn't make _you_ happy," he caught her up. "You've said it
wouldn't."
"Did I?" she asked indifferently. "I don't remember."
"You said it would make you miserable; that you'd never care a straw in
your life except for one man. You said that you'd married a man you did
not love, and that--"
She lifted a slim white hand as if to ward off a blow.
"Don't! Don't!" she cried. "No matter what I said. That was then, and
this is now. Besides, I don't always tell the truth. I am not as
deliberate as you are, you see. Sometimes I say things on impulse;
sometimes I lie with a direct purpose. And then, that night, I was not
quite myself, you know. I had had a silly dream and I allowed it to
affect me."
He drew his chair nearer and bent forward. He was by no means so sure of
himself as he had been a moment before. It was wonderful--those tones in
Nina's voice. They swayed his feelings against his better impulses. Her
voice had always been her most effective weapon. Even her beauty was
secondary to it.
He was conscious that his heart was pounding. It seemed to rise up
chokingly with every bound. And so he stammered:
"You--you mean--you--would reconsider?"
"Ah!" she murmured. "I don't know what I mean. Only--"
"Yes, yes," he hurried her. "Only--only--"
She turned her head aside and covered her face with the hand that had
checked his arraignment.
"I am so wretched!" It was little more than a whisper.
"No, no," he pleaded. "Nina, I beg of you."
His emotion swept him away, overriding all law, vaulting honor,
trampling scruples. The possibility of possession revived, and the
pathetic figure of Darling was forgotten.
He reached out for her, clasped her in his long, hungry arms; and,
yielding, she let him draw her close to him, her head nestling against
his shoulder.
"There, there," he murmured, smoothing her cheek with a hand nearly as
soft as a woman's. "I did not mean it--I swear I didn't mean it. I--I
love you more than anything in life."
Her arms wound about his neck, and he drew her up again until her gaze
was level with his own. But, even at that moment, he saw her eyes stray
across her shoulder and then suddenly grow wide as with alarm.
He felt, too, her whole figure tense, and instinctively there was
conveyed to him a contagious sense of lurking danger. He was about to
speak, to question, when, between lips barely parted, breathed rather
than whispered even, came:
"_A cobra--in the corner--where I'm looking! The pistol--quick--and
don't miss!_"
The pistol lay at his left hand, and he must needs swing quite around to
aim after getting it. But she slipped swiftly away from him to give him
free play, and he managed it very well indeed.
In the dim light he marked the cobra instantly, for a ray had been
caught by its glistening brown, upreared body, and its spread hood stood
out fairly distinct against the glazed panes of the long casement which
stood partly ajar.
Andrews fired, and the report echoed sharply against the dead silence of
the room. But there echoed, too, two other sounds, both puzzling and
disconcerting. One was a metallic ring, as of a struck gong, only
sharper and shorter, and the other was a hoarse, but muffled and
evidently restrained, cry of pain.
Man and woman were on their feet instantly. Three strides took Andrews
to the spot, and there he halted in amaze with a little exclamation of
astonishment. For the cobra had toppled over, not limp and outlying, but
stiffly; its coils intact, facing him, disklike.
It was an admirably modeled bronze.
In the perplexity following the discovery he turned questioningly to
Nina, who was close behind him. But she only lifted a warning finger and
made a sibilant sound with her lips, adjuring silence. And he noticed,
strangely enough, that the look of alarm which he had detected was--in a
lesser degree perhaps--still present.
She passed him, stepping over the bronze reptile; and, spreading wider
the casement, went out onto the veranda.
In the act of following, the fact of the muffled cry recurred to him.
Was it possible that the bullet, ricochetting from the metal casting,
had found a mark beyond the window?
With one foot across the sill a scream seemed to stop his heart from
beating. Certainly it held him motionless for a second or more. Yet he
recovered himself in time--just in time--to catch Nina in his arms as
she staggered backward, stunned and half-fainting. Nor was it any wonder
that she screamed and was stunned and half-fainted.
For fate chose that moment for making her "silly dream" come true. She
had seen a ghost on the veranda.