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"Are you going to find my 'rickshaw? It is later than I thought, and I am expecting visitors." "Ah, I know," said Noel. "Captain and Mrs. Nick of Wara, isn't it?" "Not Mrs. Nick," she corrected him. "I wish it had been. She is my greatest friend. But she can't leave England because of their child." "There's a lady of some description coming in his train," asserted Noel.
And then Nick did a strange, impulsive thing. He suddenly flung down his reserve and bared to her his inmost soul. "Yes, Olga mia, I do know," he said. "I would have done the same for you. I nearly did the same for Muriel when we were in a tight corner long ago at Wara. But whether it's right or whether it's wrong, God alone can judge.
She looked at him with quivering lips, and dumbly shook her head. "Listen!" he said. "When Muriel and I were flying from Wara, I killed a man with my hands under her eyes. It was a ghastly business. I did it to save her life and my own. But like you she didn't look at the motive only at the deed. And in consequence I became a thing abhorrent in her sight. She didn't get over it for a long time.
Her heart felt constricted, paralysed. But Mrs. Raleigh saw the entreaty which her whole body expressed, and, stooping, she took the rigid hands into hers. My dear," she said, "he has gone into the Hills in disguise, up to the native fort beyond Wara, as that is where he expects to find Phil. Heaven help him and bring them both back!" Audrey stared at her with a stunned expression.
"Nick and I," she said; and then moved to sudden confidence, "I expect you have heard of Nick, haven't you? Nick Ratcliffe of Wara! He is an M.P. too." "Oh, is he that Ratcliffe?" Her listener displayed immediate interest. "Yes, of course I have heard of him, Miss Ratcliffe. He is a man of renown, isn't he? It will give me much pleasure to meet him."
Thereafter the rage of our people came upon me, and I hacked off the breasts, that the men of Little Malikand might know the crime, and cast the body into the water-course that flows to the Kabul river. Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee! The body without the head, the soul without light, and my own darkling heart all three are one all three are one!
Shortly after this, as we were crossing a large open plain, where there were a few scattered bushes, my guide, who was a little way before me, wheeled his horse round in a moment, calling out something in the Foulah language, which I did not understand. I inquired in Mandingo what he meant; Wara billi billi, a very large lion, said he; and made signs for me to ride away.
Their people wouldn't hear of it because they were first cousins, so it fizzled out. But they are still great friends. A good sort of fellow, I always thought." "Too soft for me," said Nick. "He's like a well-built ship adrift without a rudder. He's all manners and no grit the sort of chap who wants to be pushed before he can do anything. I often ached to kick him when we were boxed up at Wara."
Musgrave looked at him with a very friendly smile. "Poor Nick!" she said. "And Wara was relieved after all." He jerked up his shoulders. "After a fashion. Grange was the only white man left, and he hadn't touched food for three days. If Muriel Roscoe had stayed, she would have been dead before Bassett got anywhere near them.
This I did to try her, for it is written: 'Trust not the incapable. Coming up the gorge alone in the falling of the light, I heard the voice of a man singing at the door of my house; and it was the voice of Daoud Shah, and the song that he sang was 'Dray wara yow dee' 'All three are one. It was as though a heelrope had been slipped round my heart and all the Devils were drawing it tight past endurance.
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