"You'll find a cigarette in my shirt pocket," said Sir Lionel quietly. "Will you light it for me? I've enough lung—to smoke, and——" he cleared his throat with difficulty. "Thanks a lot. I've something to say to you. Won't take—a minute. Fever's set in. Must talk. Last message, you know."
He smiled with strained lips.
"Strange," he added. "Thought it only happened—in books."
Gray watched the shadows crawling across the knoll, and frowned. Sir Lionel, he knew, could not survive another day. With the death of his friend, he would be alone. And he must find Mary Hastings. He wondered what the Englishman wished to tell him.
"You know," began the other, seizing a moment when his throat was clear, "I said I'd seen the faces of the men of Sungan. They had their hands on me, and I saw them close. I did not tell you at first what I deduced from that."
Gray nodded, thinking how the explorer had broken off in the middle of a sentence in his story of two hours ago.
"Don't forget, Captain Gray——" a flash of eagerness passed over the tanned face—"I was the first in Sungan. I want the men who sent me to know that. Well, the faces I saw were white—in spots."
Gray whistled softly, recalling the words of Brent. The missionary had said that the man he saw in the Gobi was partially white. Also, Mirai Khan had said the same.
"Those men, Captain Gray, were not white men. They were afflicted with a disease. I've seen it too often—to be mistaken. It is leprosy."
Mechanically, Gray fingered his pipe. Leprosy! This sickness, he knew, caused the flesh of the face to decay and turn white in the process. And leprosy was common in China.