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Updated: May 17, 2025
"Thank God!" said Amber from the bottom of his soul; and, "Ah, you would!" cried Labertouche tensely, as Naraini seized the opportunity, when his attention was momentarily diverted, to break for freedom. Amber saw the flash of a steel blade in the woman's hand as she struck at the secret-agent, and the latter, stepping back, deflected the blow with a guarding forearm.
Tell your men to fall back, please, and I'll introduce myself properly." Two words secured the secret-agent the privacy he desired; the officer offered him an ungloved hand as the troopers withdrew out of hearing. "Happy, indeed!" he said cheerfully. "I'm Rowan, Captain, Fourteenth Pioneers." "I'm Labertouche, I.S.S. This is Miss Farrell, daughter of Colonel Farrell, and this Mr.
She's a complication I hadn't foreseen.... Here; you'd better leave me to attend to her you and Miss Farrell. Go on down the gallery to the left, I'll catch up with you." The pistol which he still held lent to his demand a sinister significance of which he was, perhaps, thoughtless. But Sophia Farrell heard, saw, and surmised. "No!" she cried, going swiftly to the secret-agent. "No!"
Yet there were still words that must be spoken, lest they live in his subconsciousness to torment him through all the long, black night that was to receive him. He tried to steady himself, and lifted an arm that vibrated like the sprung limb of a sapling, signing to the secret-agent. "Labertouche," he said thickly ... "Sophia ... out of India ... at once ... life ..."
At an unseen turning, where another passage branched away, a biting wind swept out of the black nowhere, chilling them to the marrow. Deeper and still deeper, into the very bowels of the earth, it seemed, the secret-agent led them, finding his way with an unfaltering confidence that exalted Amber's admiration of him to the pitch of hero-worship.
No spoken word was needed; their understanding was implicit on the instant. Indeed the secret-agent dared not speak, lest he be overheard by an eavesdropper and so be the cause of his own betrayal. With a flutter of white garments he slipped noiselessly from the room, and Amber knew instinctively that if they were to meet again that night it would be upon the farther side of the Gateway of Swords.
Overhead the soulless city slumbered in a stillness apparently unbroken, yet he who saw its profile rugged against the stars, could fancy what consternation was then, or presently would be, running riot through its haunted ways. "How many of 'em are there, do you reckon?" he asked. "Three or four hundred," replied the secret-agent absently; "the pick and flower of Indian unrest.
Two of them are operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and join the agents McKay and Erith. This must be prevented.
Then he lurched heavily and collapsed upon himself. The secret-agent stepped back, dropping the knife he had used. "Poor devil!" he said in a compassionate undertone. "That was cold-blooded murder, Mr. Amber." "Necessary?" gasped Amber, regarding with horror the bloodstained heap of rags and flesh at his feet. "Judge for yourself," said Labertouche coolly, stepping over the body.
For an instant he resisted, raging with disappointment; but the Englishman was cool, strong, determined; inevitably in the outcome the weapon was pointed to the sky. "Steady, you ass!" breathed the secret-agent in his ear. "Can't you see "
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