The Tigress Part 14

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 c.u.mnock, 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 ident.i.ty, 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 n.o.bleman. 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 k.n.o.b. 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 pa.s.sed between them. Dinghal, it seems, made no attempt whatever to disguise his opinion.

"I don't care a d.a.m.n 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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.