"Nina!" he cried, springing up again, a note of alarm in his voice. "Look! There is blood on your slipper. It couldn't have been the _khitmatgar_. The bullet ricochetted and wounded some one. Who was it?"
She leaned forward, her heart pounding with sudden horror, and saw it for herself.
"But how--" she queried, her breath short and quick.
"From the shrubbery at the side of the veranda. Your foot must have touched the leaves. If it had been the _khitmatgar_ who was bleeding like that he couldn't have hidden it."
She was up in an instant, crying: "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?"
"Between us," said Andrews, "we've managed to wing some prowling beggar of a native, I fancy. That's all." He said it in an effort to pacify her, but he knew in his heart that it was no native.
He had known from the first that Nina's scream, emotion, and pallor were results of the unexpected. Now he was more certain than ever that he was right.
For quite a minute she paced the floor, wringing her hands. Then there was a rap on the glass of the long window, and the tall, dusky, white-clad Jowar stepped into the room. His expression was unusually grave.
"The _mem-sahib_ is mistaken," he said. "The fleeing _sahib_ goes the other way. He is wounded. We follow the _sahib_ until we see him enter the compound of the hotel. All the way the _sahib_ leave trail of blood behind."
Nina had halted, her hand clutching a curtain as if to stay herself. At the words of the _khitmatgar_ she swayed, and but for Andrews would have fallen, for the curtain stuff broke from its rings under her weight.
It was her companion who signed to Jowar that he might go. Then he supported her to a settee and eased her down upon it.
The cantonment at Umballa, which is four miles from the native town, boasts several hotels.
In a large upper room in one of these, not far from the bungalow of the Darlings, a burly, bearded gentleman--who had registered a few hours before as Henry Scripps, of Bombay--was at that moment impatiently and in no little pain awaiting the appearance of the English surgeon who lived nearest.
Around Mr. Scripps's left wrist was an improvised tourniquet, and the water which filled the basin on the wash-stand was claret-colored.