Stafford's voice was the first to bring reassurance to the
startled crowd.
"It's all right!" he shouted. "We are both safe, thank God!"
They saw that he was deadly pale, though otherwise calm and collected.
In the first moment of alarm he had instinctively caught Lois in his
arms, as though to shield her from some fresh danger, but immediately
afterward he had let her go, and she stood apart amidst the debris of
the wrecked chandelier, trembling slightly, but firmly refusing all
assistance.
"I owe my life to you," Stafford said to her, with awkward gratitude.
"You do not need to thank me," she answered at once. "I did what any
one else would have done in my place. I saw it coming."
"How did it happen?" The question came from Nehal Singh, who had
forced his way to her side. "I can not understand how such an accident
was possible."
There was an anxiety in his manner which seemed to increase during
Lois' brief hesitation.
"I hardly like to say," she said at last, in a troubled voice. "I
could not believe my eyes, and even now it seems like a dream. Or a
shadow might have deceived me. I don't know--"
"Please tell me what you saw, or thought you saw!" the Rajah begged
earnestly.
"I seemed to see the chandelier being lowered," she said, with an
irrepressible shudder, "and then from a dark hole in the ceiling a
hand appeared--a black hand with a knife--"
One of the women moaned, and there was afterward a silence in which a
wave of formless fear surged over the closed circle.
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