body over, though, and then the cause of death became more
obvious. A stream of blood welled out of the man's back, from between
the shoulder-blades--warm blood, that had not even started to coagulate.

"They've been dead about three minutes!" commented Brown, rising, and
wiping his hands in the road-dust to get the blood off them. "Pick 'em
up. Carefully, now! Frog-march 'em, face-downwards. That's better! Now,
forward. Quick, march!"

The procession advanced toward the guardhouse in grim silence, and once
again there was no challenge when there should have been. The lamp was
still burning in the guardroom, for they could see it plainly as they
drew nearer, but there was no noise of a sentry's footfalls, or hoarse
"Halt!" and "Who comes there?"

Nor was there any sign yet of the man whom Brown had left to guard both
"clink" and guardroom. Brown let them take their dead comrades into the
guardroom first, then set two fresh guards at the door, and covered up
the bodies with a sheet before commencing to investigate.

He started off toward the cell where he had imprisoned the fakir. He
went by himself, and no one volunteered to go with him.

He had gone five yards when the second explanation met his eyes. This
time there was no need to stoop down, nor to turn any body over. The
sentry whom he had left to guard both cell and guardroom stood bolt
upright, with his mouth and his eyes wide open; skewered to the wall of
the guardhouse by an iron spike, which pierced his chest.

"A lamp and four men here!" ordered Brown, without waiting to let the
horror of the sight sink in. "Take that poor chap down, and lay him in
the guardroom beside the others. How? How should I know? Pull it out, or
break it off--I don't care which; don't leave him there, that's all."

He walked on toward the cell-door, while they labored, and fingered
gingerly around the spike, which must have been driven through the
sentry's chest with a hammer.

"I thought as much!" he muttered. And, though he had not thought as
much, he might have done so. "I knew that a man who could maim his own
body in that way was capable of any crime in the calendar!"

The door of the cell stood open, and there was no sign of any fakir, or
of any one who might have helped him go--nothing but an empty cell, with
the haunting smell of the fakir still abiding in it.

Bill Brown spat, and closed the cell-door.

"I'm thinking that Juggut Khan told nothing but the truth," he