“Salaam, brothers!” he said in Hindustani, with a glance at the ring of shaggy scowling faces which hemmed him in.
The salute was sullenly returned, and then Ihalil, beckoning him to follow, led the way down the platform, surrounded by the whole party. They passed the body of the murdered policeman and that of the stationmaster, and at these some of the barbarians turned to spit, with muttered curses; and the platform, smeared and splattered with blood, was like the floor of a slaughter-house. Even the dirty white garments of the murderers were splashed with it.
Out through the gate at the end of the platform they went. Heavens, was the whole thing a dream—a nightmare? Why, it was less than an hour ago they had entered that gate all so light hearted and unthinking. He remembered the badinage he had been exchanging with Nesta as they passed in through it—and more than one reference as to meeting in Shâlalai in a week or two. Now—who could say whether he would meet anybody again—in a week or two or ever? And then his sight fell upon that which caused him well nigh to give up hope.
In the shade before the station master’s private quarters, a man was squatting—a wild, fierce-looking Baluchi. Before him the whole party now halted, treating him as with the deference due to a leader. But one glance at the grim, cruel face and eagle beak, and shaggy knotted brows, sufficed. In him Campian recognised the man who had scowled so demoniacally upon him in the retinue of the Marri sirdar—the man he had wounded and lamed for life when set upon by the Ghazis in the Kachîn valley. And this man was no other than the celebrated outlaw Umar Khan, and now, he was his prisoner.
And at that very moment it occurred to those left behind in the loft that any sort of stipulation as to the said prisoner being returned unharmed on the payment of the sum agreed upon had been entirely left out of the covenant.
Chapter Sixteen.
At Shâlalai.
“By Jove, but it is good to be back again!” said Upward, in tones of intense satisfaction as he sat down to tiffin in his bungalow at Shâlalai. “The garden is looking splendid, and then all the greenery in the different compounds after those beastly stones and junipers—I’m sick of the whole circus. Only a year or two more, thank goodness.”