room is on the ground floor, and
outside one of the windows a flight of steps leads down from the verandah
to the ground. So I have always taken care to bolt them myself."

"When?" asked Ralston.

"After dressing for dinner," she replied. "It is the last thing I do
before leaving the room."

Ralston leaned back in his chair, as though a momentary anxiety were
quite relieved.

"It is one of the servants, no doubt," he said. "I will speak about it
afterwards"; and for the moment the matter dropped.

But Ralston returned to the subject before dinner was finished.

"I don't think you need be uneasy, Mrs. Oliver," he said. "The house is
guarded by sentinels, as no doubt you know. They are native levies, of
course, but they are quite reliable"; and in this he was quite sincere.
So long as they wore the uniform they would be loyal. The time might
come when they would ask to be allowed to go home. That permission would
be granted, and it was possible that they would be found in arms against
the loyal troops immediately afterwards. But they would ask to be
allowed to go first.

"Still," he resumed, "if you carry valuable jewellery about with you, it
would be as well, I think, if you locked it up."

"I have very little jewellery, and that not valuable," said Violet, and
suddenly her face flushed and she looked across the table at Linforth
with a smile. The smile was returned, and a minute later the ladies rose.

The two men were left alone to smoke.

"You know Mrs. Oliver better than I do," said Ralston. "I will tell you
frankly what I think. It may be a mere nothing. There may be no cause for
anxiety at all. In any case anxiety is not the word" he corrected
himself, and went on. "There is a perfectly natural explanation. The
servants may have opened the window to air the room when they were
preparing it for the night, and may easily have forgotten to latch the
bolt afterwards."

"Yes, I suppose that is the natural explanation," said Linforth, as he
lit a cigar. "It is hard to conceive any other."

"Theft," replied Ralston, "is the other explanation. What I said about
the levies is true. I can rely on them. But the servants--that is perhaps
a different question. They are Mahommedans all of them, and we hear a
good deal about the loyalty of Mahommedans, don't we?" he said, with a
smile. "They wear, if not a uniform, a livery. All these things are true.
But I tell you this, which is no less true. Not one of those Mah