“Very well.  Perhaps it’s not true.  We must know.  We may be able to help,” replied her friend.

And with a word to Sher Afzul to guard her babies from danger she seized Muriel’s hand, and the two girls ran towards the Fort in the track that Wargrave had followed to his death, it seemed.

* * * * *

Pistol in hand Wargrave had raced across the parade ground.  At the gate of the Fort he was challenged; and when he answered an Indian officer came out of the darkness to him.

“Sahib,” he said hurriedly.  “Havildar Mahommed Ashraf Khan has been shot in his bed in barracks.  The sentry over the magazine is missing with his rifle.”

Wargrave entered the Fort.  Opposite the guard-room the detachment was falling in rapidly, the men carrying their rifles and running up from their barrack-rooms in various stages of undress.  By the flickering light of a lantern held up for him a non-commissioned officer was calling the roll, and his voice rumbled along in monotonous tones.  The guard were standing under arms.

“Put out that lamp!” cried the subaltern sharply.  It would only serve to light up other marks for the invisible assassin if, like most men who run amok, he meant to keep on killing until slain himself.  “No; take it into the guard-room and shut the door.”

In the darkness the silence was intense, broken only by the heavy breathing of the unseen men and the clattering of the feet of some late-comer.  Suddenly there rang out through the night the most appalling sound that had ever assailed Wargrave’s ears.  It was as the cry of a lost soul in all the agony of the damned, an eerie, unearthly wail that froze the blood in the listeners’ veins.  In the invisible ranks men shuddered and clutched at their neighbours.

“Khuda ke Nam men, kiya hai? (In the Name of God, what is that?)” gasped the subaltern.

The Indian officer at his side answered in a low voice: 

“It is Ashraf Khan crying out in pain, Sahib.  He is not yet dead.”

“Subhedar sahib, come with me,” said Wargrave.  “Let your jemadar (lieutenant) take the men one by one into the guard-room and examine the rifles to see if any have been fired.  We don’t know yet if the missing sentry did the deed.”

The Subhedar (company commander) gave the order to his subordinate and followed Wargrave to the barrack-room in which the crime had been committed.  The sight that met the subaltern’s eyes was one that he was not easily to forget.

The high-roofed chamber was in darkness save at one end where a small lamp cast weird shadows on the walls and vaulting ceiling.  At this end and under the flickering light a group of figures stood round a bed on which a man was writhing in agony.  He was struggling in delirious frenzy to hurl himself to the stone floor, and was only held down by the united efforts of three men.  From a bullet wound in his