When Wargrave reached Ranga Duar the little outpost seemed strangely forlorn without the Dermots and their children. Major Hunt and Macdonald welcomed him warmly. The latter informed him that he had insisted on the Colonel going to England for his operation because the Political Officer had not been out of India for seven years and needed the change, and besides he would receive more care and attention in a London nursing-home than in an Indian hospital. The trouble was intestinal but there was no immediate danger to his life.
Another familiar figure was missing. Before departing Dermot had released Badshah and left him to wander in freedom in the jungle, unwilling that his faithful companion of years should be servant to anyone else and confident that the elephant would come back to him when he returned to the Terai. Major Hunt placed one of the detachment elephants at Wargrave's disposal whenever he required it to take him on his tours along the frontier. And Frank needed it constantly. For, as soon as the news of Colonel Dermot's departure spread, the lawless spirits that for fear of him had not ventured for five years to disturb the peace of the Border, began to show signs of restlessness. The Political Officer's strong personality and the reputation of divinity that he enjoyed had kept them in check. But now that he was gone they thought that they could defy with impunity the young sahib who replaced him.
So the Assistant had not long to wait for an opportunity to show his mettle. Dermot had not been gone a fortnight before one or two raids were attempted on British villages by lawless mountaineers from across the Bhutan frontier. Wargrave soon proved that the mantle of Colonel Dermot had not fallen on unworthy shoulders. Single-handed he intercepted and faced a party of Bhutanese swordsmen swooping down from the hills on a tea-garden in search of loot, shot the leader and two of his followers and put the rest to flight. With a handful of sepoys of the Military Police he surprised a Bhuttia village in the No Man's Land along the border-line and captured a notorious outlaw who had plundered in Indian territory and had sent him a defiant challenge.
Wargrave was glad of the excitement and the occupation, for they kept him from brooding over his troubles and worrying about the future. He had not time to puzzle over Violet's silence. She had not written to him since their parting. As a matter of fact she seldom thought of him, so engrossed was she in the pursuit of pleasure. Admittedly the prettiest woman in Darjeeling that season she received enough attention and admiration to turn any woman's head; and she enjoyed it all to the full. Although she had answered Rosenthal's letter from Bangalore he had not written again; but she felt that he was not forgetting her. She thought oftener of him than of Wargrave; for the vision of the great riches that she might one day share with him fascinated her. It haunted her dreams sleeping and waking. Often she let her fancy stray to the existence that he had promised would be hers when he was the possessor of his father's fortune, a life of luxury in the gayest cities of the world with all that immense wealth could bestow, a life infinitely better worth living than her present one. Would she ever be given the chance of it?