“Why not?  All right.  D’you hear that, Narayan Singh?”

“Atcha, sahib.”

“You understand?” said Grim.  “Keep him moving.  Keep after him.”

“Do the sahibs wish him alive or dead?”

“Either way,” said Goodenough.

“If he’s gone from the wall when you get there,” Grim added, “bring us the news.  You’ll know where to find us”

“Atcha”

The Sikh brought his rifle to the shoulder, faced about, marched out, chose three men from the platoon in the street, and vanished.

“Too bad, too bad!” said Goodenough, but Grim did not answer.  He was swearing a blue streak under his breath.  The next to arrive on the scene was Suliman, grinning with delight because he had won all the money of the other urchins, but brimming with news in the bargain.  He considered a mere colonel of cavalry beneath notice, and addressed himself to Grim without ceremony.

“My mother brought out oranges in baskets and set them on benches on both sides of the door.  Then she went in, and I heard her scream.  There was a fight inside.”

“D’you care to bet, sir?” asked Grim.

“On what?”

“I’ll bet you a hundred piastres Scharnhoff has tried to make his get-away, and they’ve either killed him or tied him hand and foot.  Another hundred on top of that, that Scharnhoff offers to turn state witness, provided he’s alive when we show up.”

“All right.  I’ll bet you he hangs.”

“Are you coming with us, sir?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for a king’s ransom.”

“The back way out, then.”

Grim beckoned the Sikhs into the room, left one man in there in charge of Suliman, who swore blasphemously at being left behind, and led the way down a passage that opened into an alley connecting with a maze of others like rat runs, mostly arched over and all smelly with the unwashed gloom of ages.  At the end of the last alley we entered was a flight of stone steps, up which we climbed to the roof of the house on which I had seen Grim the night before.

There was a low coping on the side next the street, and some one had laid a lot of bundles of odds and ends against it; lying down, we could look out between those without any risk of being seen from below, but Goodenough made the Sikhs keep well in the background and only we three peered over the edge.  About two hundred yards in front of us the Dome of the Rock glistened in the morning sun above the intervening roofs.  The street was almost deserted, although the guards at either end had been removed for fear of scaring away the conspirators.  We watched for about twenty minutes before any one passed but occasional beggars, some of whom stopped to wonder why oranges should stand on sale outside a door with nobody in charge of them.  Three separate individuals glanced right and left and then helped themselves pretty liberally from the baskets.