The Tigress

Even the shock of Kneedrock's changed appearance – for he was almost unrecognizably changed in the nine years since their parting – failed to disturb her inner tranquillity. Only her voice betrayed her. It quavered just the least bit as she spoke the old name.

"Hal!" No one but she had ever called him that.

For his part he husbanded his words. He had taken a place with his back to the mantel and stood there in unmoving silence with his hands clasped behind him – the one still bandaged, but the sling discarded – and his brow drawn with a half frown.

Nina put out a hand tentatively and drew it back when he continued motionless.

"Perhaps you did not wish to see me," she said, nettled.

"You might have thought of that before sending me your extraordinary message." Those were the first words he spoke.

"It would have made no difference," she returned, pausing by the piano and steadying herself by resting a hand on its top. "I had to see you, whether you wished it or not. If you had not come here I should have gone into the hotel."

"I can't for the life of me see what is to be gained by it," he protested.

"There may be nothing gained unless you will believe me."

It was scarcely possible that he could miss the pathos of the words, even if he missed the pathos in the tone. Yet his only answer was a cynical smile.

"I want you to know that the shot which hurt you was not intended for you."

Then he laughed cruelly. "No?" he questioned with feigned surprise. "Still, you must admit that your lover's habit of firing at random through drawing-room windows isn't a perfectly safe amusement at best. He's liable to pot some one, you know."

Her face was crimson. "He's not my lover," she denied indignantly.

"Pardon me. I judged only from what I saw. It was quite evident he was not your husband. I am curious, seeing that he is not your lover, or one of them, what privileges you reserve for them."

"I have no lover or lovers," she protested.

"Dear me!" he said with mock astonishment. "How dreary your poor life must be! I had fancied quite the contrary."

"It was I who told him to shoot," she confessed. "He shot at a bronze cobra in the corner."

"Then he's a worse shot than I thought."

"Oh, he hit the cobra, nevertheless. The bullet glanced."

"Yes," he agreed. "I know. It glanced at me and caught my hand. I suppose the possibility of such a thing didn't occur to either of you."

"I didn't want him to kiss me," she defended at some sacrifice of truth. "In another second he would have, and I told him there was a cobra in the corner to distract him. Besides I meant to frighten our khitmatgar. I thought it was he who was spying. And it happened to be you."

"Yes," he admitted calmly. "I came all the way from Melanesia to spy. But I'm rather a novice at it, and got winged the first time. Too bad, I say."

"Then I'm not sorry. You deserved it."

"At all events," he told her, "I saw enough to send me back. I'm not fitted for civilization. I prefer the real savage to the counterfeit. I infinitely prefer the original tigress with her stripes to the reincarnated creature with her soft hands and her rose-leaf cheeks."

She didn't hear the last. It was quite lost upon her.

"You – you are going back?" she questioned, her breath short.

"To-night," he told her. "I've had enough. I'll get the boat at Calcutta that brought me."

She tried to realize the situation, but she couldn't in the least. It was all most extraordinary – she knew that. Nine years ago she had been tumultuously in love with this hulking cousin of hers.

Then, on sheer impulse, instigated by the devil within her, yet without the faintest thought of disloyalty, she had flirted riotously with the new curate, and Nibbetts had gone away to war in South Africa in a pet, without so much as a word of farewell.

In an incredibly short time had come the tidings of his death, and what with her crushing sense of irreparable loss and her ravening conscience all the world changed its colors from gay to dun.

Now the nine years of intervening space had rolled themselves into a pellet and dropped out of the actual. There was nothing real in time or place but this – he was there across the little room, alive, whole; and she was here, and they were talking as if yesterday had dated their parting. It was most extraordinary.

He was going so soon, too, and she had so much, so very much, to say.

"But you mustn't," she said simply.

In his answering look was amused amazement. "Oh, I mustn't, eh? And why mustn't I?"

"Do I have to tell you?" But her eyes were turned away.

"Yes, if you wish me to understand."

"Have – have you forgotten – everything?" And still she did not face him.

He turned sidewise and laid his left arm along the mantel-shelf to rest his injured hand.

"Most things," he answered, "thank God!" And when she did not speak he added: "You set me so fine an example in expeditious forgetting, remember, I had to profit by it."

"I never forgot," was her denial.

"For one who never forgot, you managed to mess things up a great deal, it seems to me."

"I think I was mad," she admitted, her eyes on the floor.

"I doubt if you were ever anything else," he told her bluntly. "And a man's a fool to trust a mad woman."

"Oh, I'm sane now," Nina told him. "Quite, quite sane. And I was hoping – " She paused, uncertain of her phrasing.

"Yes," he encouraged dubiously.

"That you might help me to put things straight," she finished.

He was not altogether sure of her meaning, but he chose to put upon it the worst possible construction.

"Why not let your friend of last night assist?" he asked coolly. "He seems rather expert with firearms. Mistakes are so easy, you know. He could shoot at the bronze cobra again, for instance, and aim a little high."

And at that she faced him.

"You never used to be so bitter," she said. "You can't think what you're saying."

"I've fed on bitterness. I always think the worst, and I'm usually justified. I can't see any way to undo your tangle except by murder!"

Nina shivered, and Kneedrock saw it; but she said nothing.

"I'm glad you didn't pretend to be shocked," he told her. "Only as a rule you're not very keen on quick deaths. You prefer the cat-and-mouse process. You like to play with your victim before adding the final finishing stroke."

"Who's catty now?" she asked simply.

But he made no answer. He moved over to the sofa where lay his hat and walking-stick and took them up.

"Better wait until I'm out of India," he went on cynically. "I might be brought back to testify, and that would be awkward."

"You're going now?" she asked distressfully.

"Only to the hotel. I can't sail until the twenty-seventh. Would you mind waiting until after the first?"

"But you haven't told me a thing," she deplored, ignoring his cruel implication. "Where have you been all the years? What have you been doing? Why have you hidden yourself? There is so much I want to know."

"There is so much you'll never know," he returned. "Why bother with any of it? The title dies with me. I'm not robbing any one, remember."

"You're robbing me," she said desperately, and took a step toward him. "Oh, Hal, if you only knew!"

He retreated a pace, smiling grimly.

"I'll have to ask you to stop that sort of thing, Nina," he said gravely. "You may as well know at once that I won't listen to it."

She sank down upon the sofa where his hat and stick had been, a red lip held by white teeth to check its quivering.

Kneedrock moved toward the door.

Abruptly, swept by a wave of impetuosity, she sprang up and ran to him.

"Hal! Hal! Take me with you. I won't – I can't let you go from me again!"

Already he had swung the door ajar and stood now in the opening.

"I'm afraid you'll have to," he said, his tone cold and hard as steel. "Still I'm glad you asked me. It has paid me for coming half-way round the world."

The door swung sharply shut with Kneedrock on the outside.

At the same moment the door at the opposite end of the room opened, and Jane Ramsay stood on the threshold.

"I was peeping," she cried. "He's homelier even than his name. And – and I hate him!"

"So do I," cried Nina, bracing herself. But she didn't in the least; and Jane Ramsay knew she didn't.

When Colonel Darling returned from parade the ayah was gone from the passage-way outside his wife's room. He entered to find Nina up and dressed. And he found her quite ready to answer his questions.

She told him truthfully what Kneedrock saw through the window, and she told him with equal truth why Andrews fired the shot.

More than that, she told him that his false identification of Kneedrock at Spion Kop had wrecked three lives, and that it was a dear price to pay for one man's carelessness or stupidity.

And that night there was a tragedy in the Darling bungalow.

CHAPTER VII

The Cross and the Crown

It was the very last thing Nina expected – to see Kneedrock again; but she did. He called that night after dinner on his way to the railway station, and the motor-car waited for him at the porch. For a minute she fancied he might have relented and was really, after all, going to take her with him. But, if so, he had planned in the worst possible way, the day for Lochinvar enterprises having long since passed and gone, and Colonel Darling – miracle of miracles – being still at home, not having gone to the club.

She rushed into the drawing-room expectant, or half so, and then at a sight of her caller knew that her expectancy was without grounds. For Kneedrock with his well hand was holding out something to her, which she saw almost immediately was a small jewelry box.

"I came very near forgetting it," he said, "though I brought it with me all the way just to see it safe in your hands. It is a gift from my poor dear mother."

The poor dear marchioness had always been very fond of Nina, but she had died just before the breaking out of the Boer War and at the period of Nina's flirtation with the curate.

Nina Darling opened the jewelry box and took out a curiously fashioned ring. The setting was a cross of diamonds and the band was shaped like a crown of points.

"It is lovely," she said.

"It is symbolic," he contributed. "Still I don't see that it applies very appositely to your state. You don't bear your cross at all gracefully, and you certainly don't deserve a crown."

"I should like to know who does," she retorted.

"Oh, there are some martyrs left. There's your husband, for instance. You might turn the ring over to him."

"Jack is a saint," replied Nina. "I'm busy wondering all the time how he keeps his temper."

"And he does, then?"

"Always. He's so good to me I hate him."

"There's something wrong with you. You're not normal."

"I know it. My emotions are all reversed. I'd give anything to be like other women; but I can't be."

Kneedrock was smiling incredulously. "You fool yourself, I believe," he said, "just as you fool others. You are an odd creature."

He looked at his watch and sat down on one end of the settee. She was already occupying the other.

"Jack's going away in the morning," she told him; "to be gone a month. Why don't you stay?"

"Because I mean never to give you a chance to make a fool of me again. Now you have the truth of it."

"He's off on a shooting trip."

"I wonder he doesn't shoot himself, poor beggar."

"That's the only goodness he could do me that I'd appreciate," she said with a light laugh.

Kneedrock's hulking shoulders gave a clumsy shrug.

"You ought to be flayed," he declared.

She was silent for a brief moment. Then she said: "Hadn't I better tell Jack you are here? The khitmatgar will if I don't; and I've no desire to add to the sins I should be flayed for."

"I suppose it would only be civil. Though I'm not keen on seeing him again," was the answer. "I'd no notion he was at home."

Nina stood. "He's in the gun-room. I sha'n't be a moment." And she was gone.

The seconds ticked into a minute and she was not back. Two, three, five minutes followed without bringing her. Kneedrock's time was slipping away, and he had none too much to spare.

In some impatience he got to his feet and sauntered across the room. Then, seeing the bronze cobra, which was not altogether unfamiliar, he stooped interestedly to examine it; and he found the bullet-mark.

But still Nina remained absent. To miss his train meant to miss his boat. Yet he felt that he could not go without at least a final word. He would, he must, therefore, make an effort to find her.

The door through which she had gone stood open before him. Of the plan of the bungalow he knew nothing; but he left the room and turned in haste down a dim-lit passage.

It may have been a few seconds later or it may have been minutes – Kneedrock swore afterward that it was at that very instant – that Jowar, the khitmatgar, busy in his pantry cleaning silver, was startled by a muffled detonation that shook the frail dwelling as might an earthquake.

He had been bent over his work; but the report brought him to the upright with a jerk. The soup tureen he was handling turned over and rolled to the floor. For the briefest moment he stood dazed, irresolute.

Then, kicking the tureen aside, he shot out of the pantry, ran through the dining-room, the drawing-room, the passage – all empty – until he came of a sudden to the open door of the gun-room, against the jamb of which, pressed close, with pallid face and wide, wild eyes, was Mrs. Darling.

Above her head rolled a little cloud of gray smoke. In his nostrils was the acrid smell of gunpowder.

In the room Lord Kneedrock was on his knees, and Jowar's first impression, as he gave it at the investigation, was that it was he who had been injured. On the floor beside him lay a double-barrel shot-gun, which the khitmatgar picked up. And as he stooped to do this he saw that over which the caller was bending.

Between a table and a chair, one leg gruesomely resting across a stool, stretched grimly stark and still the form of his master, Colonel Darling.

The head was in the table's shadow. But as Jowar drew closer he got sight of that which drove all the blood from beneath the dark pigment of his features. Whatever had happened it had made it impossible that he should ever look upon his master's face again.

There was no face there. It had been quite demolished.

At the same instant Kneedrock, sick at the sight, turned away to meet the khitmatgar's sinister gaze. Already it seemed the room was swarming with pressing, curious, excited native servants.

Nina had vanished, led away by her ayah. Later he learned that the gun found by Jowar had been examined. Both barrels were empty; but there was only one discharged shell.

The motor-car, waiting at the porch to take him to his train, was speeded for surgeons and medical men, as if, under the circumstances, there could be one faint ray of hope even. The garrison was advised, and the whole cantonment knew as if by magic.

Mr. Scripps, of course, couldn't go to Calcutta or anywhere else. He was as fast in Umballa as if there were chains on his hands and feet.

And it stood to reason, coming thus conspicuously before practically the whole British population, he could not hope to escape recognition.

Dinghal, the deputy commissioner, for instance, knew him at once as Viscount Kneedrock; and with Dinghal's fund of memory-stored fact and gossip, it was natural enough that he should put two and two together.

And when it is said that figures never lie, the sum of two and two is the exception that proves the rule. By adding these you can get about any result you choose.

Of Colonel Darling's tragic taking off there followed a rigid investigation.

The one person who knew the exact facts, or should have known them, was his widow. But Nina didn't and couldn't remember. The shock had wiped her memory as clean as a sponged slate.

For days she lay in a state between stupor and coma. When she came out of it she recalled that she had dreamed, but she couldn't remember the dream. It was awful, terrible, she knew that. But that was all she did know.

They had to tell her that Darling was hurt. She treated the tidings with indifference. Then they told her that he had been shot and that it wasn't certain how it happened. She thought he had gone on a shooting trip with Major Cumnock, and that the accident had happened in the jungle.

In the end they made her understand that he was dead; that his brains had been blown out in the bungalow gun-room, and that she was with him at the time. But she convinced them that she knew no more of it than she did of the fourth dimension, which was nothing at all.

Kneedrock, after frankly admitting his identity, swore to the facts as he knew them.

The native butler, Jowar, however, persistently contradicted him in one particular by averring that the viscount was in the gun-room when the shot was fired, as he himself was the first to enter it afterward, when he had found the Englishman bending over Darling's body and had picked up the gun which was lying at the viscount's right hand.

The word of a khitmatgar, however, had little weight against the sworn testimony of a British nobleman. The court agreed that death was the result of accident.

Those who knew certain matters which were aside from admissible evidence took the verdict with several grains of salt, and pointed out that in the matter of seeking motives for murder the authorities had been criminally remiss.

These knowing ones were about equally divided in opinion. The dissenting feminine element was inclined to believe that Mrs. Darling was the slayer. Whereas the doubting Thomases of the community would not put the responsibility past Kneedrock, who, they argued, had returned from hiding in a far corner of the globe, intent upon getting Jack Darling out of the way.

And for both of these views Dinghal, with his long tongue, innocent of venom still perhaps, but poisonous nevertheless – was largely responsible.

Young Andrews, risking everything, was still delaying his return to his post at Junnar. He simply must see Nina before going. He refused to abandon hope.

Once, after repulsing him, she had more than half-yielded. She had repulsed him a second time, it was true; and he did not overlook the significance of the return of Kneedrock, whom she had called her "match" and her "mate."

The odds were overwhelmingly against him. That he knew. But there might still be a chance. And he would make certain before – No, he questioned whether he could return to Junnar with that last hope gone. It might be that he – He didn't know. He wasn't going to face it until it was before him.

Then, in some roundabout way a whisper got to him that Mrs. Darling was much better. The Ramsays, for example, had been to see her.

He had all along been leaving a card for her every day or so. Now he scribbled a line on the card, asking that she would give him a few – just a very few minutes.

He hardly dared fancy that she would. But she did.

Except for her mourning, he found her very little changed.

"I thought you were at work ages ago," was how she greeted him.

He spoke then of the cards he had left. He had sent her some flowers, too.

"I've had no interest in anything," she told him. "There are hundreds of cards here. Some day I may look at them, and still I may not. Every officer in Umballa has sent me flowers, and some of the enlisted men as well. But I do thank you."

"You've never once thought of me, I believe," he reproached.

"That's true," she replied, "I haven't. I've had so much to think of, and it hurts me to think. So I've let Lord Kneedrock do most of the thinking for me."

"It hurts to be forgotten so quickly," he said, his big brown eyes suddenly misty.

"I've been trying to forget so much," Nina confessed.

"And me – did you have to try very hard to forget me?"

"I hadn't begun on you yet. You see, you didn't even occur." She noticed the mist, and added: "I'm sorry."

"You're not a bit," he declared. "You like to hurt me, I believe. But I'll make you remember."

She felt like laughing for the first time since the news of Darling's death was brought to her.

"Please don't," she pleaded.

"Don't make you remember?"

"Oh, you can't do that! I mean, please don't weep. You promised me once you wouldn't, you know."

He rose, frowning, the last hope dead, and she sat regarding him through drooped lashes.

"Good-by!" he muttered, and began backing toward the door.

She waited until his hand was on the knob. Then:

"Good-by, Gerald!" she said, smiling. "I'm so glad I had strength enough not to bolt with you when you asked me."

"Why?" he asked, desperately seizing an excuse to linger.

"Because you are so good-looking, and I do get so tired of looking at good-looking men."

When he got back to Dinghal's quarters young Andrews tried to cut his own throat, mainly to make Nina remember him. That he didn't succeed in the act was due primarily to a nervously irresolute hand, and secondarily to his friend Dinghal, who suspected and arrived in the nick of time.

In the excitement of the ensuing moment the young man told Dinghal every word of the conversation with Mrs. Darling; and the deputy commissioner, as he clumsily drew the edges of the shallow cut together and fastened them with court-plaster, waxed more and more indignant; for he was very fond of Gerald Andrews, and declared that if she didn't kill her husband it was not because she was not capable of it.

It seems probable that he did not confine the expression of this opinion, either, to the privacy of his own dwelling. For guests at a dinner-party which he attended that same evening quoted him to the same effect – exaggerated, possibly, in the retelling – and the report in time trickled into the hearing of Kneedrock.

Thereupon the viscount called upon the deputy commissioner, and some hot words passed between them. Dinghal, it seems, made no attempt whatever to disguise his opinion.

"I don't care a damn what you think," returned Nina Darling's cousin. "That's your own business; the inalienable right of man and beast is to think whatever they please. But when a man gossips or a dog snarls, that changes the matter. They both deserve correction."

Dinghal was not the most robust of men, but he was no coward. As has been said, he was rarely malicious. As a rule, he rehearsed his story, and left it to his hearers to draw their own conclusions.

This time, through sheer loyalty to young Andrews, he had erred, and he knew it. But he was far from admitting this to Kneedrock.

"And in the present instance the correction is to be administered – how?" he asked.

"By me – with this," was the viscount's answer, holding up his doubled right hand.

"You mean your purpose is to punch my head?"

"Precisely," returned the other.

"You must be mad, Lord Kneedrock. Remember that I am a civil officer in his majesty's service. If you feel that I have injured you or yours in any way, there is a recognized means of adjustment. There are the courts."

"The courts are too slow and indecisive."

"Nevertheless, if you dare lay a hand on me I shall test them. I give you fair warning."

Kneedrock laughed his irritating laugh.

"You are quite meeting my opinion of you," he said. "You are a cur and a poltroon."

The deputy commissioner's face flamed. "If you dare repeat that," he snapped, "I shall – "

"Go to the courts, I assume."

The viscount saw his fingers double into his palms. "You are a liar and a scandalmonger!" he flung at him. And at this Dinghal drew back his fist.

"Although you have the advantage," he flared, "no man may blackguard me and go unpunished!"

"My left hand is crippled," said Kneedrock. "I shall not use it." And as Dinghal aimed a blow at his chin, he guarded with his right.

The bout lasted something over four minutes, during which Kneedrock landed at will. There was no instant when he did not command.

Now and again, to encourage his adversary to face further punishment, he permitted him to get in a body blow, or accepted a glancing tap on neck or cheek. And by way of finale he broke Dinghal's somewhat protuberant nose.