A White Slipper and a Red Stain
The native servants, startled by the pistol-shot, flocked in haste to
the veranda. In the lead was Jowar, the Darlings' _khitmatgar_, whom
Nina hated. And he saw her in Andrews's arms.
It was only for an instant, however. The presence of Jowar revived her
like a cold shower, and she stood on her own feet with her chin in the
air.
"I saw a man running," she explained. "It must have been he that shot
through the window. Oh, how frightened I was!"
The _khitmatgar_ inquired as to which way the miscreant had run, and
Nina pointed in exactly the opposite direction from that in which she
had been facing when she staggered back into young Andrews's embrace.
Jowar set off in pursuit instantly, and the others followed. All, that
is, save Nina's _ayah_, who opportunely produced a bottle of
smelling-salts and passed it to the _mem-sahib_.
Sniffing at it, Mrs. Darling dismissed her.
When Nina and Andrews were back in the drawing-room and again quite
alone he saw that she was still trembling. Moreover, in spite of the
ruddy glow from the single lamp in the corner, she was as pallid as
ashes.
"Dearest," he murmured, hastily encircling her slim waist with a
supporting arm, "you are wonderful! Any other woman would be in
hysterics."
Very gently she extricated herself from his embrace.
"I haven't lived five years in India for nothing," she said.
"But what was it?" he asked. "Why did you want me to shoot? Why--"
"I fancied that devilish _khitmatgar_ was spying again," she hastened to
answer, slipping into a chair. "I saw something move--out there."
"And so you made me shoot at the bronze?"
"It's a very realistic bronze, isn't it?" she asked.
But he didn't answer. "Was it the _khitmatgar_?" he pressed.
And now she didn't answer.
"The bronze was a present," she went on instead. "Do you mind setting it
upright again?"
He did so. "Odd I never saw it before," was his comment. "I thought I'd
seen everything in this room. When I was here two days ago it seemed to
me that every object spoke of you. I missed nothing. And yet--"
"That came this morning," she told him. "A gift without a card."
Young Andrews frowned.
"It's a horrid thing," he said. "I don't like it."
"It's beautiful!"
"It's ill-omened. I feel it is."
He saw her shiver again, but she tried to smile. Her pallor had grown no
less.
"Tell me," he insisted, "_was_ it the _khitmatgar_, do you think?"
"Who else could it have been? He will tell Jack Darling he saw me in
your arms. And then--Hadn't you better be going? Aren't you overdue in
Junnar?"
"And leave you? Never!"
"But you must," she said calmly.
"When I go you go with me. Now that I know you love me--"
"I never said I loved you. I don't. I can't. I love but one man. I know
it now as never before. For just a moment I thought--" And there she
stopped.
"You thought?" he questioned, suddenly agitated.
"I thought I might forget. I thought perhaps you could make me forget. I
was, you see, so utterly weary of everything."
"You were right," he cried earnestly. "I can make you forget. I'll give
my whole life to it. I'll--"
He bent over her, but she drew away quickly with a gesture of repulsion,
which Andrews was quick to note. It cut him cruelly, and he stepped
back, pained and crestfallen.
In the instant of silence that ensued he swept her with a devouring gaze
from head to foot. Was he to lose her again--now, when for a second time
he had been so sure?
One dainty, white-shod foot was stretched out from beneath her skirt,
and as his eyes reached it a dark, smearlike stain across the toe
arrested his attention and awoke a question. Impulsively he dropped to
one knee and swept a finger across it.
"Nina!" he cried, springing up again, a note of alarm in his voice.
"Look! There is blood on your slipper. It couldn't have been the
_khitmatgar_. The bullet ricochetted and wounded some one. Who was it?"
She leaned forward, her heart pounding with sudden horror, and saw it
for herself.
"But how--" she queried, her breath short and quick.
"From the shrubbery at the side of the veranda. Your foot must have
touched the leaves. If it had been the _khitmatgar_ who was bleeding
like that he couldn't have hidden it."
She was up in an instant, crying: "What have I done? Oh, what have I
done?"
"Between us," said Andrews, "we've managed to wing some prowling beggar
of a native, I fancy. That's all." He said it in an effort to pacify
her, but he knew in his heart that it was no native.
He had known from the first that Nina's scream, emotion, and pallor were
results of the unexpected. Now he was more certain than ever that he was
right.
For quite a minute she paced the floor, wringing her hands. Then there
was a rap on the glass of the long window, and the tall, dusky,
white-clad Jowar stepped into the room. His expression was unusually
grave.
"The _mem-sahib_ is mistaken," he said. "The fleeing _sahib_ goes the
other way. He is wounded. We follow the _sahib_ until we see him enter
the compound of the hotel. All the way the _sahib_ leave trail of blood
behind."
Nina had halted, her hand clutching a curtain as if to stay herself. At
the words of the _khitmatgar_ she swayed, and but for Andrews would have
fallen, for the curtain stuff broke from its rings under her weight.
It was her companion who signed to Jowar that he might go. Then he
supported her to a settee and eased her down upon it.
* * * * *
The cantonment at Umballa, which is four miles from the native town,
boasts several hotels.
In a large upper room in one of these, not far from the bungalow of the
Darlings, a burly, bearded gentleman--who had registered a few hours
before as Henry Scripps, of Bombay--was at that moment impatiently and
in no little pain awaiting the appearance of the English surgeon who
lived nearest.
Around Mr. Scripps's left wrist was an improvised tourniquet, and the
water which filled the basin on the wash-stand was claret-colored.
Mr. Scripps had just succeeded in filling a brier pipe with his right
hand unaided, and was in the act of striking a match when his room door
was swung hurriedly ajar to admit Mayhan, of the Buff Hussars, with his
kit of surgical instruments.
"You've taken the devil's own time it appears to me," growled Mr.
Scripps. "Now you're here, for God's sake, make haste!"
The greeting took the young surgeon somewhat aback.
"Sorry you think so," he returned, leisurely opening his bag and
pretending that the catch had caught by way of retaliation. "As a matter
of fact, I came on the instant."
Scripps rumbled under his breath and emitted a volume of gray smoke.
"Shot in the hand, I understand," Mayhan went on, wrenching the bag open
at length with considerable fuss and feather.
Scripps grunted an affirmative.
"How did it happen?" the surgeon inquired, taking out a probe.
But the wounded man didn't answer. He dropped into a chair under the
light and said: "Come now, make haste."
Mayhan emptied the blood-stained water from the basin, poured some
fresh, and mixed an antiseptic in solution. Then he began cleaning the
wound.
"Rather nasty, that," he commented. "The bullet has dug in here between
the two outer metacarpal bones, and I'm not sure it hasn't shattered the
trapezium."
"Get it out," cried Scripps impatiently, "and talk about it afterward.
I'll grant you know the anatomy of the hand and the name of every bone
in it. That's about the first thing you're taught."
Mayhan gritted his teeth. The man was certainly a boor. Still there was
perhaps provocation in the pain he was suffering. Nevertheless, the
surgeon rather enjoyed the probing. He knew how he was hurting, yet his
victim wouldn't give him the satisfaction of wincing.
He drew it out at last and held it up to the light.
"I know that," he said, inspecting it. "A forty-five of the sort they
use in those new American automatics. Has yours the new safety device?"
Scripps's teeth let go his lip long enough to growl: "No! That was the
devil of it!"
As the young surgeon proceeded with his work of cleansing he continued
to chatter:
"I was hoping it had. I wanted to see it. Colonel Darling was speaking
of it last night at the club. There's a friend of his here--a young
fellow named Andrews, from over on the Bombay side--who has one. He's
promised Darling to show it him."
Scripps was pale from pain, but his grit was indomitable. He choked back
a groan and said:
"Darling? Colonel Darling? I think I know him."
"I dare say."
Scripps relapsed into silence again. The wound still hurt abominably.
"Darling distinguished himself at Spion Kop, you know," Mayhan gave
tribute as he unwound some iodoform gauze. "Fine chap, the colonel."
But his patient only grunted.
"Same man you know?" the other pressed.
Scripps nodded.
"I'll mention you're here."
There was no reply.
"Know him well?" inquired the surgeon guardedly.
Scripps had his lip in his teeth again, and it was bleeding; but he let
it go.
"Better than he knows me, apparently," he said with a grim smile.
"He'll remember your name, I suppose?"
"I'm sure he won't. He won't know who Scripps is from Adam."
Mayhan, mollified now in a measure by the man's fortitude, used the
cocain that he had denied him at first and proceeded with the dressing.
"If you're so keen on telling the colonel, just say you've seen
Nibbetts," the brusk one suggested.
"Nibbetts?"
"Yes. He'll know then."
"I'll remember. I'll probably see him to-night at the club. He may look
you up at once, if you don't mind. Fine fellow, the colonel."
The relief from the cocain was instantaneous, but Scripps's manner
showed no change.
"That's twice you said that," he rumbled. "There are some that don't
agree with you."
"I know," returned Mayhan. "Some never agree with any one. That's where
the word disagreeable comes from."
Scripps made no retort, and the dressing continued in silence. When it
was finished and Mayhan was repacking his kit, he ventured: "Nibbetts,
you said, didn't you?"
The merest movement of the tawny, leonine head gave assent.
"I'll tell him." And then the surgeon took a closer look. Scripps's
bearded chin was on his breast. His face, in spite of its tan, was
deathly white. "By the way," he added, "you'd better have a brandy peg.
You've lost some blood, you know, and--"
"That's my business," the other interrupted roughly. "You're a sawbones,
not a medical man. And a sawbones _sans merci_, at that. Otherwise
you'd have begun with the cocain, instead of ending with it."
Mayhan turned away without another word and made a wry face behind the
savage's back. Two minutes later he was down the stairs and in the hotel
porch, where he was confronted by young Andrews.
"I saw you go in," lied the latter nervously. "And I've been waiting for
you. What happened? I've a reason for asking."
The young surgeon, whose faculty for putting two and two together was as
acute as the next man's, sensed the reason at once.
"He won't die," he answered--"if that's what you want to know."
"Who won't die?" Andrews came back evasively. He had volunteered to get
what information he could for Mrs. Darling, and he was distinctly
uncomfortable under the attitude taken by this man whom he had started
to question.
"The boor upstairs who got in the way of someone's forty-five-caliber
automatic. It wasn't by any chance yours, I suppose?"
The blood rushed to Andrews's face, but in the dim light of the porch it
is probable that Mayhan failed to observe it.
"I don't indulge in indiscriminate pistol practice," he defended weakly.
"I heard a man had been wounded and came in here, and I strolled over to
inquire out of idle curiosity."
"He won't die," said Mayhan again, and prepared to move away.
"But who is he?" asked Andrews, following a step.
"The most insufferable beast I've met in years--name of Scripps."
"Army man?"
"No; civilian. Or uncivilian, rather."
"Badly hurt?"
"Hand torn up a bit. Anything else you'd like to know?"
Andrews hesitated. Then: "Say how it happened?"
Mayhan grinned toward the shadows.
"Oh, yes," he answered wickedly, "of course! Naturally, I asked him."
"Well--"
"You are curious, Andrews, aren't you?"
"Oh, if there's any secret about it--why, I--"
Mayhan laughed irritatingly; so irritatingly that his questioner was
tempted to silence him with his fist.
"No secret at all," the surgeon said, starting off. "It happened--purely
by accident."
Then young Andrews, nettled and thoroughly uncomfortable, hastened back
to Nina with his scant news. The name "Scripps" meant nothing to her.
But Mayhan, meanwhile, dropping into the club, exploded a bombshell. He
found Colonel Darling alone and brooding in his chosen corner, a tall
glass of Scotch and soda at his right hand.
"I say, colonel," he blurted, "just came from a chap who says he knows
you--or did. Name of Nibbetts."
Darling started so violently that his arm struck the table, jarred it,
and sent over the whisky glass, splashing.
For a moment his face flamed and the veins in his neck swelled to the
danger point. He gripped the chair-arms, and his throat emitted an
inarticulate gurgle.
The next minute he relaxed suddenly, pale as paper.