Jane Gerson, tossing on her pillows, heard the mellow bell of a clock somewhere in the dark and silent house strike three. This was the fifth time she had counted the measured strokes of that bell as she lay, wide-eyed, in the guest chamber's canopied bed. An eternity had passed since the dinner guests' departure. Her mind was racing like some engine gone wild, and sleep was impossible. Over and over again she had conned the events of the evening, always to come at the end against the impasse of General Crandall's blunt denial: "You shan't sail in the morning." In her extremity she had even considered flight by stealth—the scaling of walls perhaps, and a groping through dark streets to the wharf, there to smuggle herself somehow on a tender and so gain the Saxonia. But her precious gowns! They still reposed in their bulky hampers here in Government House; to escape and leave them behind would be worse than futile. The governor's fiat seemed absolute.

Urged by the impulse of sheer necessity to be doing something—the bed had become a rack—the girl rose, lit a taper, and began to dress herself, moving noiselessly. She even packed her traveling bag to the last inch and locked it. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, hands helplessly folded in her lap. What to do next? Was she any better off dressed than thrashing in the bed? Her yearning called up a picture of the Saxonia, which must ere this be at her anchorage, since the consul said she was due at two. In three short hours tenders would puff alongside; a happy procession of refugees climb the gangway—among them the Shermans and Willy Kimball, bound for their Kewanee; the captain on the bridge would give an order; winches would puff, the anchor heave from the mud, the big boat's prow slowly turn westward—oceanward—toward New York! And she, a prisoner caught by the mischance of war's great mystery, would have to watch that diminishing column of smoke fade against the morning's blue—disappear.

Inspiration seized her. It would be something just to see the Saxonia, now lying amid the grim monsters of the war fleet. From the balcony of the library, just outside the door of her room, she could search the darkness of the harbor for the prickly rows of lights marking the merchant ship from her darker neighbors. The general's marine glasses lay on his desk, she remembered. To steal out to the balcony, sweep the harbor with the glasses, and at last hit on the ship of deliverance—for all but her; to do this would be better than counting the hours alone. She softly opened the door of her room. Beyond lay the dim distances of the library, suddenly become vast as an amphitheater; in the thin light filtering through the curtains screening the balcony appeared the lumpy masses of furniture and vague outlines of walls and doors. She closed the door behind her, and stood trembling; this was somehow like burglary, she felt—at least it had the thrill of burglary.

The girl tiptoed around a high-backed chair, groped her way to the general's desk, and fumbled there. Her hand fell upon the double tubes of the binoculars. She picked them up, parted the curtains, and stepped through the opened glass doors to the balcony. Not a sound anywhere but the faint cluck and cackle of cargo hoists down in the harbor. Jane put the glasses to her eyes, and began to sweep the light-pointed vista below the cliff. Scores of pin-prick beams of radiance marked the fleet where it choked the roadstead—red and white beetles' eyes in the dark. She swung the glasses nearer shore. Ah, there lay the Saxonia, with her three rows of glowing portholes near the water; the binoculars even picked out the double column of smoke from her stacks. Three brief hours and that mass of shadow would be moving—moving——

A noise, very slight, came from the library behind the opened doors. The marine glasses remained poised in the girl's hands while she listened. Again the noise—a faint metallic click.

She hardly breathed. Turning ever so slowly, she put one hand between the curtains and parted them so that she could look through into the cavernous gloom behind her.

A light moved there—a clear round eye of light. Behind it was the faintest suggestion of a figure at the double doors—just a blur of white, it was; but it moved stealthily, swiftly. She heard a key turn in a lock. Then swiftly the eye of light traveled across the library to the door leading to General Crandall's room. There it paused to cut the handle of the door and keyhole beneath out of darkness. A brown hand slipped into the clear shaft of whiteness, put a key into the keyhole, and softly turned it. The same was done for the locks of Lady Crandall's door, on the opposite side of the library, and for the one Jane had just closed behind her—her own door. Than the circle of light, seeming to have an intelligence all its own, approached the desk, flew swiftly to a drawer and there paused. Once more the brown hand plunged into the bore of light; the drawer was carefully opened, and a steel-blue revolver reflected bright sparks from its barrel as it was withdrawn.

Jane, hardly daring to breathe, and with the heavy curtains gathered close so that only a space for her eyes was left open, watched the orb of light, fascinated. It groped under the desk, found a nest of slender wires. There was a "Snick—snick!" and the severed ends of the wires dropped to the floor. The burnished dial of the wall safe, set near the double doors, was the next object to come under the restless searching eye. While light poured steadily upon the circular bit of steel, delicate fingers played with it, twisting and turning this way and that. Then they were laid upon the handle of the safe door, and it swung noiselessly back. A tapering brown hand, white-sleeved, fumbled in a small drawer, withdrew a packet of papers and selected one.

Jane stepped boldly into the room.

"Sahibah!" The white club of the electric flash smote her full in the face.

"What are you doing at that safe, Jaimihr Khan?" Jane spoke as steadily as she could, though excitement had its fingers at her throat, and all her nerves were twittering. She heard some sharply whistled foreign word, which might have been a curse.

"Something that concerns you not at all, Sahibah," the Indian answered, his voice smooth as oil. He kept the light fair on her face.

"I intend that it shall concern me," the girl answered, taking a step forward.

"Veree, veree foolish, Sahibah!" Jaimihr whispered, and with catlike stride he advanced to meet her. "Veree foolish to come here at this time."

Jane, frozen with horror at the man's approach, dodged and ran swiftly to the fireplace, where hung the ancient vesper bell. The flash light followed her every move—picked out her hand as it swooped down to seize a heavy poker standing in its rack beside the bell.

"Sahibah! Do not strike that bell!" The warning came sharp and cold as frost. Her hand was poised over the bell, the heavy stub of the poker a very few inches away from the bell's flare.

"To strike that bell might involve in great trouble one who is veree dear to you, Sahibah. Let us talk this over most calmly. Surely you would not desire that a friend—a veree dear friend——"

"Who do you mean?" she asked sharply.

"Ah—that I leave to you to guess!" Jaimihr Khan's voice was silken. "But certainly you know, Sahibah. A friend the most important——"

Then she suddenly understood. The Indian was referring to Captain Woodhouse thus glibly. Anger blazed in her.

"It isn't true!"

"Sahibah, I am sorry to con-tradict." Jaimihr Khan had begun slowly to creep toward her, his body crouching slightly as a stalking cat's.

"I'll prove it isn't true!" she cried, and brought the poker down on the bell with a sharp blow. Like a tocsin came its answering alarm.

"A thousand devils!" The Indian leaped for the girl, but she evaded him and ran to put the desk between herself and him. He had snapped off the torch at the clang of the bell, and now he was a pale ghost in the gloom—fearsome. Hissing Indian curses, he started to circle the desk to seize her.

"Open this door! Open it, I say!" It was the general's voice, sounding muffled through the panels of his door; he rattled the knob viciously. Jane tried to run to the door, but the Indian seized her from behind, threw her aside, and made for the double doors. There his hand went to a panel in the wall, turned a light switch, and the library was on the instant drenched with light. Jaimihr Khan threw before the door of the safe the bundle of papers he was clutching when Jane discovered him and which he had gripped during the ensuing tense moments. Then he stepped swiftly to the general's door and unlocked it.

General Crandall, clad only in trousers and shirt, burst into the room. His eyes leaped from the Indian to where Jane was cowering behind his desk.

"What the devil is this?" he rasped. Jane opened her mouth to answer, but the Indian forestalled her:

"The sahibah, General—I found her here before your opened safe——"

"Good God!" General Crandall's eyes blazed. He leaped to the safe, knelt and peered in. "A clever job, young woman!"

Jane, completely stunned by the Indian's swift strategy, could hardly speak. She held up a hand, appealing for a hearing. General Crandall eyed her with chilling scorn, then turned to his servant.

"You have done well, Jaimihr."

"It—it isn't true!" Jane stammered. The governor took a step toward her almost as if under impulse to strike her, but he halted, and his lips curled in scorn.

"By gad, working with Woodhouse all the time, eh? And I thought you a simple young woman he had trapped—even warned you against him not six hours ago. What a fool I've been!" Jane impulsively stretched forth her arms for the mercy of a hearing, but the man went on implacably:

"I said he was making a fool of you—and all the time you were making one of me. Clever young woman. I say, that must have been a great joke for you—making a fool of the governor of Gibraltar. You make me ashamed of myself. And my servant—Jaimihr here; it is left to him to trap you while I am blind. Bah! Jaimihr, my orderly—at once!" The Indian smiled sedately and started for the double doors. Jane ran toward the general with a sharp cry:

"General—let me explain——"

"Explain!" He laughed shortly. "What can you say? You come into my house as a friend—you betray me—you break into my safe—with Woodhouse, whom I'd warned you against, directing your every move. Clever—clever! Jaimihr, do as I tell you. My orderly at once!"

Jane threw herself between the Indian and the doors.

"One moment—before he leaves the room let me tell you he lies? Your Indian lies. It was I who found him here—before that safe!"

"A poor story," the general sniffed. "I expected better of you—after this."

"The truth, General Crandall. I couldn't sleep. I came out here to the balcony to try to make out if the Saxonia was in the bay. He came into the room while I was behind these curtains, locked the doors, and opened the safe."

"It won't go," the general cut in curtly.

"It's the truth—it's got to go!" she cried.

Jaimihr, at a second nod from his master, was approaching the double doors. Jane, leaping in front of them, pushed the Indian back.

"General Crandall, for your own sake—don't let this Indian leave the room. You may regret it—all the rest of your life. He still has a paper—a little paper—he took from that safe. I saw him stick it in his sash."

"Nonsense!"

"Search him!" The girl's voice cracked in hysteria; her face was dead white, with hectic burning spots in each cheek. "I'm not pleading for myself now—for you. Search him before he leaves this room!"

Jaimihr put strong hands on her arms to force her away from the door. His black eyes were laughing down into hers.

"Let me ask him a question first, General Crandall—before he leaves this room."

The governor's face reflected momentary surprise at this change of tack. "Quickly then," he gruffly conceded. Jaimihr Khan stepped back a pace, his eyes meeting the girl's coldly.

"How did you come into the room—when you found me here?" she challenged. The Indian pointed to the double doors over her shoulder. She reached behind her, grasped the knob, and shook it. "Locked!" she announced.

"Why not?" Jaimihr asked. "I locked them after me."

"And the general's door was locked?"

"Yes—yes!" Crandall broke in impatiently. "What's this got to do with——"

"Did you lock the general's door?" she questioned the Indian.

"No, Sahibah; you did."

"And I suppose I locked the door to Lady Crandall's room and my door?"

"If they, too, are locked—yes, Sahibah."

"Then why"—Jane's voice quavered almost to a shriek—"why had I failed to lock the double doors—the doors through which you came?............