There being no other entrance that we knew of, Jeremy and I doubled up
on the same job, and a rat couldn't have come through without one of the
three of us detecting him. If we had had our senses with us we might
have realized that Narayan Singh was perfectly capable of watching that
single narrow space, and have used our own eyes to better advantage.
However, we're all three alive today, and two of us learned a lesson.


It wasn't long--perhaps five minutes--before a man showed himself
outside the gate, like a spectre dodging this and that way in response
to unearthly impulse. Once or twice he started forward, as if on the
point of sneaking in, but thought better of it and retreated. Once his
attitude suggested that he might be taking aim with a pistol; but if
that was so, he chose not to waste a shot or start an alarm by firing at
a mark he couldn't see. What he did accomplish was to keep six keen
eyes fixed on him.

And that gave three other men their chance to gain an entrance at the
rear of the wall in the garden, and creep up unawares. It was probably
sheer accident that led all three of them along the far side of the
house, but it was fortunate for Jeremy and me, for otherwise cold steel
between our shoulder-blades would likely have been our first intimation
of their presence.

We never suspected their existence until they gained the veranda by the
end opposite to where we waited; and I think they would have done their
murder if the man outside the gate hadn't lost his head from excitement,
or some similar emotion and tried to make a signal to them. All three
had brought up against the end window, where a shade torn in two places
provided a good view into the room in which Grim, Mabel and the doctor