In possession of the torchlight, he strode out upon the veranda. There he discovered a trail of spots identical with that on the matting, a trail that led down the steps. He made a quick search of the compound. A sense of helplessness smote him. Manlove, perhaps somewhere within calling distance, yet unable to summon him....
He halted at the gate. On the left was jungle, dark and hushed; on the right, a few lights in the nearest bungalow. Across the road was the mouth of a narrow path which he knew led to the ruins of an old temple hidden behind the rank foliage. At thought of the ruins an impulse made him forsake the compound and follow the path.
Less than two hundred yards from the road the growths thinned. Looming before him, spectral in the yellow mystery of the moonlight, was the temple. The outer court was throttled with weeds. Luxurious vines trailed from ruined pillar to ruined wall and wove a sanctuary for vipers. At the end of an avenue of crumbled columns gaped the black entrance of the inner court. An impalpable vapor steamed up from the moist plants and bathed the ruins in a dream-like haze, as the blurred waters of the ocean engulf and make fantastic the myriad rock-palaces of the sea-bottoms.
The dark inner court challenged Trent, and he snapped off the light and moved between the stone sentinels. A power, terrifying in its vagueness, pressed upon him, locking his muscles in a tension. A bat, startled out of hiding by the ring of his footsteps, flapped up from the parapet and wheeled across the moon's face. But for that, and an occasional rasp of an insect, the temple was swathed in a hush.
In the doorway of the inner court he paused. He groped for the shattered frame; clutched something tangible; fought against a terrible paralysis.
Yellow moonshine poured through a rent in the ceiling, drenched the walls and formed a honey-hued pool on the flagging.
In the wan light lay a human form.
A deadly inertia coiled about Trent's brain and body. For a moment he was unable to think, to do other than struggle against the constricting coils of horror. But at length he broke the rigor. A few steps brought him to the pool of moonlight. He knelt; switched on the torch; saw the face. Dull agony spread from his throat to his limbs. In that instant he seemed to slip back through a millennium and endure the concentrated pains of a hundred bodies—a flame of cosmic anguish burning down through the dim jungles of time.
Automatically his hand went to the heart, but before his trained fingers touched the breast he knew that to feel was useless. Dark moisture stained the tunic-front. He unbuttoned the garments. Knife wound! Manlove had been dead at least a half hour.
The infinitesimal fraction of a minute that he knelt there might have been an hour for the multitude of irrelevances that sped through his brain. Orders. Benares.... And he had cursed when he struck his knee! Had Manlove ridden with him to Colonel Urqhart's this would not have happened. Urqhart; what an absurd name.... Murder. In a vague manner he wondered who had done it; in a vague manner he felt angry. Dead. Impossible. This must be a dream, a horrid nightmare. Damn these nightmares! It was the heat ... heat.... His comrade.... Kasvin.... Kut-el-Amara. And this was the end! The futility of things swept him, a chill and shuddersome tide that served to wash some of the tangles from his thoughts.