Ten minutes later, however, it was brought back to it in a rather startling manner; for, upon rounding the end of the thoroughfare along which they had been walking, and coming abreast of an isolated building (which was clearly the stable of the house they had recently passed), they were surprised to hear the sound of a muffled cry within, to catch a whiff of charcoal smoke as the door was flung wildly open by the same muffled female Mr. Narkom had observed previously, and something more than merely startled to have her rush at them the instant she caught sight of them, crying out distractedly: "I was afraid of it, I knew it! I knew that he would! Oh, help me, gentlemen--help me for the love of God! I can't lift him. I can't drag him out--he is too heavy for me! My husband! In there! In _there_! He'll die if you don't get him out!" They understood then, and for the first time, what she was driving at, and rushed past her into the stable--into what had once been designed for a coachman's bedroom--to find an apartment literally reeking with the fumes that poured out from a charcoal furnace on the floor, and beside that the body of a man--inert, crumpled up, fast sinking into that hopeless state of unconsciousness which precedes asphyxiation by charcoal. In the winking of an eye Cleek had caught up the deadly little firebrick furnace and sent it crashing through the plugged-up window into the grounds behind, letting a current of pure air rush through the place; then, while Narkom, with one hand over his mouth and nostrils, and the other swinging a pair of handcuffs by their chain, was doing a like thing with another window in the front wall, he gathered up the semi-conscious man, swung him sacklike over his shoulder, carried him out into the roadway, and propped him up against the side of the stable, while he chafed his hands and smacked his cheeks and, between times, fanned him with his hatbrim and swore at him for a "weak-backed, marrowless thing to call itself a man, and yet go in for the poltroon's trick of suicide!" The woman was still there, squeezing her hands and sobbing hysterically, but although she had not as yet uncovered her face, it did not need that to attest the fact that she was no Hindu, but white like the man she had spoken of as her husband, and at the very first words she uttered when she saw that he was beyond danger, both Cleek and Narkom knew them for what they were--Sir Mawson and Lady Leake. "Mawson, how could you!" she said reproachfully, going to him the very instant he was able to get on his feet, and folding him to her in an agonized embrace. "I suspected it when you left the house--but, oh, how could you?"