Linforth’s eager voice broke in again.

“What can I do to help?”

Ralston looked up once more.

“Nothing—­for the moment.  If Shere Ali is captured in
Peshawur—­nothing at all.”

“But if he escapes.”

Ralston shrugged his shoulders.  Then he filled his pipe and lit it.

“If he escapes—­why, then, your turn may come.  I make no promises,” he added quickly, as Linforth, by a movement, betrayed his satisfaction.  “It is not, indeed, in my power to promise.  But there may come work for you—­difficult work, dangerous work, prolonged work.  For this outrage can’t go unpunished.  In any case,” he ended with a smile, “the Road goes on.”

He turned again to his office-table, and Linforth went out of the room.

The task which Ralston had in view for Linforth came by a long step nearer that night.  For all night the search went on throughout the city, and the searchers were still empty-handed in the morning.  Ahmed Ismail had laid his plans too cunningly.  Shere Ali was to be compromised, not captured.  There was to be a price upon his head, but the head was not to fall.  And while the search went on from quarter to quarter of Peshawur, the Prince and his attendant were already out in the darkness upon the hills.

Ralston telegraphed to the station on the Malakand Pass, to the fort at Jamrud, even to Landi Khotal, at the far end of the Khyber Pass, but Shere Ali had not travelled along any one of the roads those positions commanded.

“I had little hope indeed that he would,” said Ralston with a shrug of the shoulders.  “He has given us the slip.  We shall not catch up with him now.”

He was standing with Linforth at the mouth of the well which irrigated his garden.  The water was drawn up after the Persian plan.  A wooden vertical wheel wound up the bucket, and this wheel was made to revolve by a horizontal wheel with the spokes projecting beyond the rim and fitting into similar spokes upon the vertical wheel.  A bullock, with a bandage over its eyes, was harnessed to the horizontal wheel, and paced slowly round and round, turning it; while a boy sat on the bullock’s back and beat it with a stick.  Both men stood and listened to the groaning and creaking of the wheels for a few moments, and then Linforth said: 

“So, after all, you mean to let him go?”

“No, indeed,” answered Ralston.  “Only now we shall have to fetch him out of Chiltistan.”

“Will they give him up?”

Ralston shook his head.

“No.”  He turned to Linforth with a smile.  “I once heard the Political Officer described as the man who stands between the soldier and his medal.  Well, I have tried to stand just in that spot as far as Chiltistan is concerned.  But I have not succeeded.  The soldier will get his medal in Chiltistan this year.  I have had telegrams this morning from Lahore.  A punitive force has been gathered at Nowshera.  The preparations have been going on quietly for a few weeks.  It will start in a few days.  I shall go with it as Political Officer.”