“Someone up the road is—that’s why I was chevying those ‘budmashes.’ Come along up there and we’ll investigate.”
The Forest Officer shouted lustily to his servants to bring a lantern, and they, aroused by the shots, were not long in doing so. Raynier picked himself up, somewhat gingerly.
“I say—you did get a toss,” said the other. “Not hurt, eh?”
“N-no. I think not. Shaken up a bit—like a tonic bottle.”
Strange to say the bicycle had received little or no damage either.
“These Pathans are tough,” said the Forest Officer. “Fancy being able to clear out after a collision like that.”
They reached the spot where the dead man was lying. A shout or two from Raynier brought out his own people, with more lanterns. It was not a nice sight to gaze upon at midnight—the ghastly fear and agony stamped upon the dead face, and the great pool of blood still welling forth afresh as they turned the body over. Raynier could not help contrasting it in his mind with the scene he had just left hardly more than a quarter of an hour ago.
“I seem to know the face too,” he said, in a puzzled way. “Who is he, Kaur Singh? Do you know?”
“Ha, Huzoor. It is the trading man whom your Highness allowed to travel on the skirt of your protection when we had been visiting Mushîm Khan.”
But the rascal took very good care to say nothing about having turned him away from the gate that very night. The man was dead, and therefore he himself was safe. But the offender was happily ignorant of the fateful consequences that rebuff was destined to entail upon his master, upon others—and, perchance, upon himself.