To his right lay one of the guest bungalows, and a light, hanging on the veranda, showed a billowy form of large proportions filling an armchair. Somebody must have arrived, for the bungalow had been empty, the captain mentally noted.
In bed, Swinton drifted from a tangle of queries into slumber. Why had the German drawn Finnerty into wrestling the Punjabi? Why had some one stolen the uncut sapphire? What was behind the prince's pose in religion? Who was the woman behind the lattice--yes, it was a woman----Then Swinton drowsed off.
It is soul racking to awaken in a strange room, startled from sleep by unplaceable sounds, to experience that hopeless lostness, to mentally grope for a door or a window in the way of a familiar mark to assist one's location. When Captain Swinton was thrust out of deep slumber by a demoniac tumult he came into consciousness in just such an environment. Lost souls torturing in Hades could not have given expression to more vocal agony than the clamour that rent the night.
Swinton was on his feet before he had mentally arranged his habitat. He groped in the gloom for something of substance in the sea of uncertainty; his hands fell upon the table, and, miraculously, a match box. Then he lighted a lamp, pushed out into the passage, and saw Lord Victor's pajamaed figure coming toward him.
"What a bally row!" the latter complained sleepily. "Must be slaughter!"
Out on the veranda, they located the vocal barrage; it was being fired from the bungalow in which they had seen the bulky figure in white. Perhaps the vociferous one had seen their light, for he was crying: "Oh, my lord and master, save me! Tiger is biting to my death! I am too fearful to explore across the compound. Heroic masters, come with guns!"
"Oh, I say! What a devilish shindy!" Lord Victor contributed petulantly. "Is that bounder pulling our legs?"
"It's a baboo, and a baboo has no sense of humour; he doesn't pull legs," the captain answered. "But he does get badly funked."
Another voice had joined issue. Swinton knew it for a "chee-chee" voice, a half-caste's.
"Yes, sar," the new pleader thrust out across the compound; "we are without firearms, but a prowling tiger is waiting to devour us."