Some one found me a restless field-artillery horse which was giving the
gunners a lot of trouble, and I rode back to Oadpur alone--not having
any business at the front. As I approached the old Gate House, the
flutter of a white dress caught my eye. It was almost dawn, and a pink
haze hung over the paddy-fields. The world had that appearance of peace
and cleanliness which is left by the passage of an Indian night. My
rooms were on the ground-floor, and it seemed to me that, at the sound
of my horse's feet, some one had come out of them to pass up the stone
stairs that led to Graham's quarters. As I slipped out of the saddle the
sound of a distant cannon broke the silence of the night, and my horse,
despite his forty miles accomplished in little more than five hours,
pricked up his ears. I tied him up, and instead of going to my own rooms
went upstairs.
Miss Watson was standing in the first room I entered. The quick tropic
dawn had come, and I saw the face of a woman who had not slept.
“Major Graham's servant told me that he was ill. I have--a--a right
to know how he is, and where he is,” she said with her imperturbable
self-possession.
“Graham is at the front,” I answered, and the sound of the cannon, dull
and distant, finished the sentence for me.
Bertha Watson bit her lip to hide its quivering, and looked at me,
breathing hard.
“We have rung up the curtain,” I added, remembering our talk in the
verandah of the Residency.
“How did he get there?”
“Across my saddle in a state of insensibility, which passed off, as I
expected it would, an hour before the time fixed for the storming of
the fortifications. Some one drugged him in order that he might not
take part in this action. Some one who feared him--or for him. Le
Mesurier-Groselin called me to him, and only we three know of it. I am
the only medical man connected with the affair, and I can certify that
it was a native drug that was used, and that therefore a native must
have done this thing. Probably a native spy, Miss Watson, who, finding
out the proposed surprise too late to warn the rebels, attempted to
disorganize the force by this means. Do you understand?”
She looked at me with all her keen wits in her eyes.
“No one would ever dream that another had done it--say some one who was
attached to Graham, and who, in a panic, gave way to temptation and did
him a great wrong, while saving him from danger.”
I stood aside as I spoke and motioned her towards the door, for the
place would soon be astir.
“My!” she exclaimed. “And I reckoned you were a fool--behind that single
eye-glass. It is not you that is the fool, doctor.”
Then suddenly she turned at the head of the stairs and whispered
hoarsely--
“And if he is killed?”
“That is what he is paid for, Miss Watson. We can only wait and hope
that he isn't.”
Austin Graham was not killed, but came back with, as the Brigadier said,
the Victoria Cross up his sleeve. I happened to be near Bertha Watson
when they met, and there was that in her eyes when they encountered his
which was a revelation to me and makes me realize even now what a lonely
man I am.