e fell back from his own conviction, testing each link of the
chain, still uncertain and still doubtful of what course he should
pursue.

He had another object in view, an object that entailed a troublesome
interview, and he turned his thoughts towards its possible issue.
Information might be at hand in the safe keeping of his servant Shiraz,
but he considered that he must argue his own conclusions apart from
anything Shiraz had discovered. Narrowing his eyes and sitting forward
on the edge of his bed, he thought out the whole progress of his scheme.
Coryndon was an essentially quiet man, but as he thought he struck his
hands together and came to a sudden decision.

If life offers a few exciting moments, the man who refuses them is no
adventurer, and Coryndon saw a chance for personal skill and definite
action. He felt the call of excitement, the call that pits will against
will and subtlety against force, and that is irresistible to the man of
action. Probably it was just that human touch that decided him. One
course was easy; a mere matter of reassuming a disguise and slipping
back into the life of the people, which was as natural to him as his own
life. A tame ending, rounded off by hearing a story from Shiraz, and
laying the whole matter in the hands of Hartley. The proof against the
assistant was almost conclusive, and if Shiraz had burrowed into the
heart of the motive, it gave sufficient evidence to deliver over the
case almost entire to the man who added the last word to the whole drama
before the curtain fell.

Coryndon knew the full value of working from point to point, but beside
this method he placed his own instinct, and his instinct pointed along a
different road, a road that might lead nowhere, and yet it called to him
as he sat on the side of his bed, as roads with indefinite endings have
called men since the beginning of time.

Against his own trained judgment, he wavered and yielded, and at length
took his white _topi_ from a peg on the wall and walked out slowly up
the garden. It was three in the afternoon. Just the hour when Shiraz was
lying on his mat asleep, and when Leh Shin slept, and Mhtoon Pah drowsed
against his cushion from Balsorah, each dreaming after his own fashion;
and it was an hour when white men were sure to be in their bungalows.
Hartley was lying in a chair in the veranda, and all through Mangadone
men rested from toil and relaxed their brains after the morning's work.

Coryndo