"Yes, sir," responded the policeman again. "Put them down," he bade his prisoner.
Kamis, with a sigh, lowered his hands, wincing at the stiffness of his cramped arms.
"Thank you," he said to Ford, in a low voice. "I 've had them up--it must be half an hour."
"Well, you 're all right now," responded Ford, with a nod.
He tried the study door but it was locked and there was no response to his knocks and his rattling of the handle.
"Jakes," he called, several times. "I say, you 're wanted. Jakes, d'you hear me?"
Kamis and the trooper watched him in silence, the latter with his bold, unhappy features set into something like a sneer. They saw him test the strength of the lock with a knee; it gave no sign of weakness and he stood considering on the mat. An idea came to him and he went briskly, with his long stride, to the front door.
"In case you can't rouse him," said the Kafir, "you might like to know that I am a doctor--M.B., London."
"Are you?" said Ford thoughtfully. "You're Kamis, are n't you?"
"I 'll let you know if there 's anything you can do,", said Ford.
The contrast between the Kafir's pleasant, English voice and his negro face was strange to him also. But stranger yet, he could not in the presence of the contemptuous policeman speak the thing that was in his mind and tell the Kafir that he was to blame for the whole business. The voice, the address, the manner of the man were those of his own class; it would have been like quarreling before servants.
"Thank you," said the Kafir, as Ford went out to the stoep.
The sill of the study window was only three feet above the ground, a square of dull light filtering through curtains that let nothing be seen from without of the interior of the room. Ford wasted no more time in knocking and calling; he drew off a slipper and using it as a hammer, smashed the glass of the window close to the catch. Half the pane went crashing at the first blow, and the window was open. He threw a leg over the sill and was in the room.
A bracket lamp was burning on the wall and shooting up a steady spire of smoke to the ceiling, where a thick black patch had assembled and was shedding flakes of smut on all below it. The slovenliness of the smoking lamp was suddenly an offense to him, and before he even looked round he went across and turned the flame lower. It seemed a thing to do before setting about the saving of Margaret's life.