The narrator of the grim tale folded his hands across his breast, bowed his head, and thus remained in an attitude of meditation. There was an interval of silence.
"Who murdered the informer?" at last asked the astrologer.
"We never learned," replied the magistrate.
"Was he strangled with his own silken scarf?"
"No. A plain cotton loin-cloth had been used for the deed. It had never been worn or washed. It must thus have come straight from some shop in the bazaars. But scores of the same kind are bought and sold every day. We could discover nothing from this, the only clue the murderer had left behind him."
"The assassin must have been the mysterious individual you saw in the rear of the shop of Kubar Bux," commented the Afghan general. "Himself a member of the thug fraternity, he no doubt took swift vengeance on the informer for having betrayed its secrets."
"As I believed then, and believe now. But the whole affair remained a puzzle. For how was access gained to the locked and guarded prison cell, and to my sleeping chamber as well whence the sacred pickaxe was stolen?"
"Well, who can be certain even of his associates or followers? According to the miscreant's own story, there are thugs all around, knowing each other but not known to us."
"Can such things be?" asked the merchant, his eyes showing the fear and horror that had smitten him. "Many times have I travelled in company with just such a promiscuously gathered crowd as the strangler described."