"Yes, I am afraid it must," said Ernshaw, "but still, sufficient unto the day; we shall do no good by anticipating that. We may as well leave it, as the old Greeks used to say, on the knees of the gods."
And meanwhile the gods were working it out in their own way, using Koda Bux as their instrument. Vane had gone to sleep after a second dose of the drug which had brought him out of his fit, and, as the keen Oriental intellect of Koda Bux had more than half expected, perhaps intended, he soon began to talk quite reasonably and connectedly in his sleep, and so it came to pass that a mystery which had puzzled Koda Bux for many a long year was revealed to him.
When the Doctor came Vane was sleeping quietly, and, while he was examining him, Sir Arthur arrived, and was told that he had been taken ill shortly after dinner, and this the Doctor explained was probably due to the very severe mental strain to which he had subjected himself during the last week or so. He went up to his room and found Koda Bux on guard. Koda salaamed and said:
"Protector of the poor, it is well! To-morrow Vane Sahib shall be well, but now he must sleep."
"Very well, Koda Bux," replied Sir Arthur. "I know he can have no better nurse than you, and you will watch."
"Yes, sahib, I will watch as long as it is necessary."
Then Sir Arthur went downstairs to hear from Ernshaw and Dora the now inevitable story of the sin of the man who had been his friend for more than a lifetime. He heard it as a man who knew much of men and women could and should hear such a story—in silence; and then, saying a quiet good-night to them, he went up to his room to have it out with himself just as he had done on that other terrible night when he had found Vane drunk on the hearth-rug in the Den, and had recognised that he had inherited from his mother the fatal taint of alcoholic insanity.
When he awoke the next morning, after a few hours' sleep, Koda Bux was not there to prepare his bath and lay out his clean linen. It was the first time that it had happened for nearly twenty years, and it was not until Sir Arthur came downstairs that he heard the reason. Koda Bux had vanished. No one knew when or how he had gone, but he had gone, leaving no sign or trace behind him.
"Vane," said Sir Arthur, as soon as the truth dawned upon him, "we must go down to Worcester at once. I know where Koda Bux has gone, and what he has gone to do. Garthorne's crime was vile enough, God knows, but we mustn't let murder be done if we can possibly help it. Ah, there's an ABC, Vane, just see which train he can have got to Kidderminster. I know the next one is 9.50, which we can just catch when we have had a mouthful of breakfast; that's a fast one, too; at least, fairly fast; gets there about half past one."
"5.40, arriving 12.15, 6.30 arriving 12.20," said Vane, reading from the time-table.