“What were the intentions of the man Ormuz in regard to Miss Abingdon, I don’t know.  His entourage all left England some days ago—­with three exceptions.  I believe him to have been capable of almost anything.  He was desperate.  He knew that Ormuz Khan must finally and definitely disappear.  It is just possible that he meant Miss Abingdon to disappear along with him!

“However, that danger is past.  Mrs. McMurdoch, who to-day accompanied her to his house, was drugged by these past-masters in the use of poisons, and left unconscious in a cottage a few miles from Hillside, the abode of Ormuz.

“You will have observed, gentlemen, that I am somewhat damaged.  However, it was worth it!  That the organization of the Fire-Worshippers is destroyed I am not prepared to assert.  But I made a discovery to-day which untied my hands.  Hearing, I shall never know how, that Naida had had a secret interview with me, Fire-Tongue visited upon her the penalty paid seven years ago by my informant in Nagpur, by Sir Charles Abingdon, recently, by God alone knows how many scores—­hundreds—­in the history of this damnable group.

“I found her lying on a silken divan in the deserted house, her hands clasped over a little white flower like an odontoglossum, which lay on her breast.  It was the flower of sleep—­and she was dead.

“My seven years’ silence was ended.  One thing I could do for the world:  remove Fire-Tongue—­and do it with my own hands!

“Gentlemen, at the angle where the high road from Upper Claybury joins the Dover Road is the Merton Cottage Hospital.  Mr. Harley is awaiting us there.  He is less damaged than I am.  A native chauffeur, whose name I don’t know, is lying insensible in one of the beds—­and in another is a dead man, unrecognizable, except for a birthmark resembling a torch on his forehead, his head crushed and his neck broken.

“That dead man is Fire-Tongue.  I should like, Mr. Commissioner, to sign the statement.”