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Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they had not been successful.
Stafford's voice was civil and sympathetic. "Confidence breeds carelessness," was Mr. Mappin's enigmatical retort. "You were over-confident then?" "Quite clearly so. I thought that Glencader was beyond reproach." There was a slight pause, and then Stafford, flicking away some cigarette ashes, continued the catechism. "What particular form of reproach do you apply to Glencader?" "Thieving."
But the understanding did not come, and on that ominous, prophetic day before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian Stafford had dined with Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent Street, there had been a wild, aching protest against it all.
Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign Minister, the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of Tynemouth, and Mr. Tudor Tempest." "'And Mr. Tudor Tempest," Ian repeated to himself.
Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, saving the lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it was almost as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader than to take him to a London hospital.
Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a dark corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had suddenly grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival at Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on.
Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep sometimes singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time I ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?" "Yes, it is like that just like that," she answered, taking his hand, and holding it with a motherly tenderness. "Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added.
It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life itself.
The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng was not the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour at the Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain physical degeneracy he had been too slow in recovering from the few bad hours spent in the death-trap.
Fellowes had stolen the needle from Mr. Mappin at Glencader," he added. "How you know that?" asked Krool, in a husky, ragged voice. "I saw him steal it and you?" "No. He tell me." "What did he mean to do with it?" A look came into Krool's eyes, malevolent and barbaric. "Not to kill himself," he reflected. "There is always some one a man or a woman want kill."
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