"Yes, if the rumours of war between Germany and Britain come true and all Europe flames into a blaze, you'll see Ananda strike."
"Gad! If we could only nip him--find him with the guns!"
"That's what he's afraid of; that's why he wants to get rid of me."
"I have a feeling that he wishes I had not come," Swinton said. "I fancy he suspects me. It's all mystery and suspicion. He'll hear about the Buddhists' veneration for Burra Moti and you'll have her stolen next."
"Not without the sapphire in the bell--I won't put it in again. And I warn you, captain, that you'll stand a good chance of getting a Thug's towel about your neck, for they'll know you have one of the sapphires."
"Yes; the servants have it on their tongues now--they've been spying on us, I know."
"That reminds me!" Finnerty rose, went to his room, opened his steel box, turned up the low-burning lamp, and unlaced the sapphire from the bell. Raising his head, he caught a glint of a shadowy something on the window; it was a shift of light, as though a face had been suddenly withdrawn.
"Damn it!" the major growled, locking the box.
"Either somebody is peering over my shoulder all the time or this mystery is getting on to my nerves."
He went along to the verandah, and, putting the sapphire into Swinton's palm, hiding its transference with his own hand, said: "Slip that quietly into your pocket, and when you get home hide it."
"I don't value it much," Swinton answered.
With an uncertain laugh, Finnerty declared: "I'd throw it in the sea. Like the baboo, I think it's an evil god. I mean, it will be if Ananda gets the three sapphires together; he'll play up their miracle power; they'll be worth fifty thousand sepoys to him."
They smoked in silence till Swinton broke it: "I found a little notebook the murderer of Perreira dropped that evidently belonged to a British officer, though leaves had been torn out here and there for the purpose of destroying his identity. The man himself didn't do this, for there were entries in a different hand at the pages these leaves had been torn from--sort of memos, bearing on the destroyed matter."
"If the identity were destroyed, captain, how do you know an officer owned it?"
"For one thing, he had used an army code, though changed so that I could only make out bits of it; and in two or three places the other has written the word 'captain.' One entry in code that I've partly worked out is significant: 'Darpore, March.' And that entry, I gather from other words surrounding it, was written in England. The second handwriting wasn't Perreira's; I have his on that envelope he addressed to me. The latter entries are in a woman's hand."