The Tigress

CHAPTER V

The Question of the Dead Alive

Colonel Darling's courage had never been questioned. But physical courage is one thing and moral courage is another – very much another; and it was physical courage in which Darling was strong.

It was beyond question that he could face overwhelming odds in the field without "batting an eye-lash," as the saying goes. He had proved that time and time again. Yet from unhappy wedlock he had fled like a craven wolf and sought surcease in the bottle.

This should have spoken his type of weakness for all to hear. But his fellow officers were deaf to the truth, forbearing to view the situation from the only right and real standpoint, though the condition was undeniably plain.

For the tidings brought by Mayhan the colonel was not in the least prepared. Again moral courage was demanded, and again he exhibited the white feather. To Mayhan's faith in his commanding officer the exhibition was an astonishing setback. Darling had been bowled over by a mere name.

Others, too, had heard and witnessed with much the same amazement. It was very clear to them all that Colonel Darling had been thrown into a white funk by the mere mention of the odd word "Nibbetts."

They could get it from no other angle, and they could reconcile it with nothing they knew of their man. In view of subsequent events, their attitude at this moment is important.

Darling was quite five minutes in pulling himself together. Then he caught the doubt in Mayhan's eyes, and his first impulse was to explain – or try to. But on second thought, realizing that there was nothing for him to say, he ordered whisky and soda and held his peace. And no man asked a question.

The clock pointed to five to eleven. At ten past Colonel Darling left the club and walked to the hotel, which was less than a quarter of a mile away. But there his cowardice caught him again, and he paused at the gate of the compound.

The broad, shaded roadway was deserted, so that what followed went unobserved. Back and forth, torn by indecision, he irritably and fearsomely paced. For the uplift of his flagging, flaccid will he seemed likely to require either the Archimedean lever or the Archimedean screw.

Fifteen awful minutes dragged torturously by before, in sheer desperation, he entered the hotel and faced the clerk in charge, his card in his hand.

"Send that to the Visc – " he began, only to pull himself up with a sharp jolt.

The clerk in charge, not overburdened with wits, failed to catch the significance of the abbreviation. He only stared and waited.

"Send that to Mr. Mayhan's patient," corrected the colonel, the sweat beading on brow and chin, and turned to pace the floor as he had paced the roadway.

The wait, though seemingly interminable, ended too quickly for his wish, and his rap on the door of Mr. Scripps's room was hesitant and feeble.

There came in answer an inarticulate rumble, and an instant later across ten yards of floor space he gazed on the confronting Nibbetts, and paused, speechless. But the confronting Nibbetts – the nickname by which the Viscount Kneedrock had been best known to relatives and close friends – was eminently more composed.

"I am indeed deeply honored," he said and bowed stiffly. The irony of his tone was withering.

Darling, fighting himself for words, advanced a step or two. Then: "I should never have known you," he ventured unfortunately.

The other laughed with a hoarse, grim bitterness.

"No?" he queried. "How odd!" And his caller colored to his eyebrows.

"Would you care to sit down?" the viscount continued, pushing a chair forward with his uninjured right hand. The left, bandaged, was supported by a sling. "It may help you to some self-possession."

But Colonel Darling, irritated, shook his head.

"I sha'n't detain you," he said. "But – I – you see – you see, I had to make sure. I should never have believed, otherwise."

"You're quite sure you believe now?"

"Quite. Still, I can't understand. I would have sworn – "

"You did swear," Kneedrock interrupted. "That was the devil of it."

The colonel's lip twitched under his mustache.

"I never had a doubt," he averred. "I – I am unspeakably sorry."

"Much good that does. Still, it's no end decent that you should say so. Yet, on the whole, I fancy you got rather the worst of it. Will you sit down to oblige me? I've something I'd like to say to you."

Jack Darling, wretched as never before in his wretched life, slid limply into the chair that waited.

"Can't I offer you something?" asked Kneedrock, his hand on the bell.

In spite of his pride and because of his misery the colonel accepted.

Certainly the viscount's was the more commanding presence. He seemed to have taken the situation in hand at once. Darling was still the reverse of composed. His eyelids twitched and his lips quivered.

The two men were nearly of an age. If there was any advantage here it, too, was on the side of Kneedrock, who had just turned forty-four. But in general appearance the colonel contrasted strongly for the better.

He was especially well groomed, whereas Nibbetts was at once leonine, rugged, and nearly shabby. His tawny hair and beard were ragged and uncared for. He gave the impression of having been out of the world in which such things mattered. And this was true.

Having dispensed his hospitality, he reverted to his sneer. He was still standing when he said:

"I assume Mrs. Darling never showed you my letter of six years ago."

His voice aroused the officer, who was in a reverie.

"Your – your letter?" he queried uncertainly.

"My letter from Zanzibar, in which I said I was starting for the world's end."

"Yes, I saw that."

"And still you refused to believe? How often our wishes guide our reason."

Something of resentment, of indignation, struck a light in Darling's pale eyes, but his voice held to a monotone.

"I couldn't. I – " He hesitated, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his perspiring brow. "You see, I – I didn't know your hand, and – well, the signature might have been any one's. It was, if I remember, your Christian name only."

"You mean you suspected that Nina was playing you a trick?"

"I – I didn't say so."

"Others saw it, I suppose? Others that knew me? Those that did know my hand?"

"Yes, I fancy they did. I heard the question discussed."

"What question?"

"The question of the miracle. The question of the dead alive."

Kneedrock's lip curled and his huge shoulders stretched their sinews.

"Huh!" he grunted. "After all, it didn't matter. You'd already married her. You'd already begun to reap tares."

Now the pale eyes of Darling flashed ominously. "You've no right to say that," he said shortly with irritation.

"I'm not alone in saying it," returned the honorable viscount calmly. "I've heard it in the islands of the south seas. You didn't fancy it was a secret, I hope?"

Colonel Darling was silent.

"She's led you a pretty dance, I dare say."

Still Colonel Darling was silent.

"I understood, too, that the worm had turned? Pray pardon the simile."

Colonel Darling being still silent, Kneedrock smiled.

"I was fool enough to come all the way back here with the idea of punishing you," he pursued. "But I've changed my mind about that. You're getting punishment enough, that's plain. So I am going to thank you instead. I know now what was spared me. Darling, you have my sympathy; you have really."

Darling got suddenly to his feet. "Damn your sympathy!" he cried. "I don't know what you've heard. But I do know it isn't true."

And at that the viscount laughed. "I haven't heard anything," he retorted. "I've seen. And I'm like you – I believe what my eyes tell me. Your eyes told you I was butchered to death at Spion Kop, and you couldn't be convinced I wasn't until you saw me here to-night resurrected. You wouldn't take my written word, and I can't take your spoken word. The evidence to the contrary is too strong."

The colonel was again silent. He lifted his glass and drained it.

"I'm glad you called," Kneedrock continued. "Not that I needed any further conviction, but – "

"Further conviction?" Darling broke in. "I thought – "

"That you were yourself the only conviction. Oh, no. I knew before you came. I saw before you came. I had already made up my mind to go back without seeing you."

Darling gazed at him in mingled amazement and perplexity.

"I – I don't understand," he faltered. "You – you've seen Nina, perhaps?"

"I've seen Nina."

"And it was she who told you?"

"She hasn't spoken to me. I am going away without so much as a word from her or to her."

The colonel's perplexity waxed greater. "Will you kindly tell me what under Heaven you're driving at? It's all a riddle to me – a damned – "

"I'll not tell you another word," the other answered. "You must know all I do – and more, I dare say. Why should I add anything to the bare fact that I know where the fault lies, and that it is not in you?"

"Because you've said too much to leave it where it is," Darling insisted. "You must say it. You must say what you saw, and where and when you saw it."

But then Kneedrock laughed again in his grim, bitter fashion.

"You're not my superior officer here, remember," he came back. "I obey no commands but my own; and I refuse to submit to dictation."

The red flag of anger overspread Darling's visage.

"I infer that you have been spying," he charged.

"You may infer what you please – even that if it gives you any satisfaction. I shall not presume to dictate to you, either."

At that instant the bandaged hand protruded by chance a bit beyond its sling, and Darling's gaze rested upon it.

"I begin to see," he said more calmly.

The other noted the look and caught the inference. "Oh, this!" he exclaimed, holding it up. "Rather nasty."

"How did you get it?" asked the colonel boldly.

"Man-eater," was the answer. "Vicious beast!"

"You've been in the jungle, then?"

Kneedrock calmly began refilling his pipe. "Didn't Mayhan tell you?" he queried.

"Not a word."

"Ah! Yes, I've been in the jungle, and I stumbled on a she-tiger's lair." It was not intentional, but the manner of the speech gave it a significance aside from the phrasing.

Darling was standing by a table, and as he dropped his eyes musingly they rested on a small object that lay beside the tray of decanters and glasses. In an instant he was holding it up.

"May I have this?" he asked. It was a .45-caliber bullet, and the blood on it was still damp.

"No," refused Kneedrock flatly.

"I fancied not," rejoined the colonel. "You're keeping it as a souvenir, I suppose."

"I'm keeping it as evidence," the viscount said, lighting his pipe.

Later that night Jack Darling did an utterly unheard of thing. He knocked loudly on the door of his wife's bed-chamber and demanded admittance.

Nina, who had not yet fallen asleep, sat up in alarm, gathered herself together with an effort, and then, strangely enough, admitted her husband without protest. And if there can be a comparison in unheard of things, this was still more utterly unheard of.

She had turned up the reading-lamp, which, being shaded and its glow directed toward a limited area, did little more than make the general darkness of the room visible. Then she sat down on the bed's edge within the glow's circumference and waited.

Jack Darling didn't sit down. He stood in the shadow biting the ends of his mustache, his hands behind him, and his gaze, which was fixed on Nina, narrowed. She felt in her heart that something momentous was about to transpire; and it would be idle to say she was without suspicion of the underlying cause. For the report brought her by young Andrews had fallen far short of either satisfying or giving adequate relief to her anxieties.

Still she was not prepared for her husband's first and deliberately spoken sentence, which was:

"I have just come from Harry Kneedrock."

Nina wanted to scream then, but she couldn't. Her breath came too short. And she needed every bit of breath she could draw, because her heart had grown suddenly big in her breast and was pounding fearfully.

She felt, too, that if she opened her mouth it must pop out. It was only by breathing rapidly and keeping her lips tight-closed that she kept it in.

"He arrived in Umballa this evening early," Jack Darling pursued. "He saw you and got an ugly shot in the hand from – this."

He held something up which caught and reflected all the diffused light that had stolen outside the illuminated circle; and she saw it was the Andrews automatic. Still she couldn't have spoken had death threatened her for her silence.

"I found it in the drawing-room. Its magazine lacks a single cartridge. I've talked to Jowar, and everything fits. But there's something that Kneedrock won't say and that Jowar doesn't know. So I've come to you for it, and you'll tell me. You must."

He waited a moment for her to say something, but she was still mute. Her eyes were all pupils. They appeared like two black holes in a face devoid of any tint of color, for her lips were blanched and her lifted brows were hidden behind her drooping hair.

"I must know what it was that Kneedrock saw," he pressed.

Her hands were gripping the mattress on either side of her – gripping it until her finger-nails doubled and then broke.

"And I must know why he was shot at," he added.

And then Nina, who had been doubling all the while, broke, too. Before Darling could reach her she pitched forward, a hunched heap on the floor.

CHAPTER VI

A Hard Man and Bitter

It was the next morning, and Nina's ayah sat on a chair in the passage, guarding the door of her mistress's room. To all comers she gave the same answer – her mem-sahib was sleeping after a night of wakefulness and must not be disturbed.

She gave it to Colonel Darling no less than three times – once before breakfast, once after, and again before he rode away for parade, his eyes bloodshot and his hands all a-tremble.

And all the while the room behind the door was as empty of life as a hatched egg-shell. For in the darkest hour of a gray dawn, closely veiled, Nina had stolen away with her ayah escorting, and had taken refuge with the Ramsays, who had a small bungalow within the hotel compound – the same hotel, be it added, which sheltered "Mr. Henry Scripps, Bombay."

Of course she told the Ramsays her story – or, which is closer to fact, a story. Some of it was truth, but it was neither all the truth nor nothing but the truth. She believed dissemblance necessary, and so she had no hesitation in dissembling.

Her main purpose was to escape for a while from Darling and his unanswerable questions, and in the meantime to obtain at all hazards an interview with Kneedrock. She hadn't the faintest idea what the viscount purposed doing, but whatever it was she must stop him.

She knew from what young Andrews had told her that he was masquerading under the name of Scripps. So as Scripps she spoke of him in relating her tale of embarrassment to her American friend, Sibylla Ramsay, while Sibylla's daughter, who should have been fast asleep, sat by and listened with apparently adult understanding.

She implied without actually saying so that she had once had a more or less violent flirtation with Mr. Scripps; that her husband knew of it, and that she feared the consequences of his present presence in Umballa. Therefore it was imperative that she see him and urge his departure at the very earliest possible moment.

She couldn't receive him in her own home, but she'd like to receive him in theirs; and she did hope they would not regard it as an imposition on their friendship and good nature.

"Well, I should say not," returned Sibylla. "I think it's just the loveliest thing. I'm mad over romance, Nina, you know. And this is so romantic."

"Do you mind if I peep at him, dear Mrs. Darling?" asked Jane, nervously gathering her kimono more closely about her slim limbs. "I know he's handsome from his name. It isn't beautiful. Men with beautiful names are always so disappointing."

"You may peep all you care to, my dear," said Nina, "but you mustn't listen. Otherwise I'd suggest that you hide behind the piano or under the sofa. May I write him a note, Sibylla, and bribe your maid to deliver it?"

"You may serenade him from my front veranda if you care to, dear, and I'll beckon him when he comes to his window. But if you think the note idea more discreet, adopt it by all means."

So Nina wrote the note and then sat in a fever of impatience until the dawn grew brighter and the hands of the watch on her wrist circled to a more reasonable morning hour.

She had recovered some measure of poise, but the experience of the night had left its marks upon her, and the uncertainty as to whether Kneedrock would come or refuse to do so, coupled with the prospect of the meeting, which she both longed for and feared, filled the waiting period with a nervous tension that fretted and rasped.

She had begged him to send her an answer, if only verbal. But the maid returned without so much as a syllable. And so her waiting in uncertainty was prolonged. Meanwhile she drank the black coffee with which Sibylla plied her with the assurance that its sustaining power was superior to her habitual tea.

At ten minutes to nine, by the watch on her wrist, just as the fourth cup had been placed in her somewhat steadied hand, the maid who had carried the note brought proof of its delivery by announcing that Mr. Scripps awaited Mrs. Darling's pleasure in the bungalow drawing-room.

Sibylla and Jane were both wonderfully pleased and excited, and Nina, who had expected this moment, if it ever came, quite to overcome her with emotional agitation, surprised herself with a calmly self-contained placidity which she naturally attributed to the stimulation of the caffein.