"It looks as if he were playing a lone hand at some game of his own," said Forsyth, doubtfully.
But the General would have no vague conjectures. Having settled within approximate limits the time when Beaumanoir quitted his room, he desired to learn how he had left the house. He himself had been sitting up from two, at which hour he relieved Forsyth, till five o'clock, and he would stake his reputation that no one had been moving during the period of his vigilance. The Duke must have left the house between five and six, at which latter hour the servants began to be moving.
This view was strengthened by inquiry from the butler, who reported that on going his rounds to open up the house he had discovered one of the windows of the smoking-room unbolted, though he had himself seen to the fastenings the night before. He had not thought anything of it, supposing that one of the gentlemen had gone out for an early stroll.
The General led Forsyth aside. "Whatever has happened to Beaumanoir, he has courted his own fate by going outside unattended," he said. "It almost looks as if he had been lured out by some trick of his enemies, in which case Azimoolah has probably been done to death while endeavoring to protect him. Come and help me search the park once more, and then if we find nothing we must call in the police."
Making a detour by the stable-yard, so as to avoid meeting and being questioned by the ladies, they struck out for the leafy recesses of the broad belt of woodland that fringed the park. Allotting one section to Forsyth and taking the other himself, the General repeated the process of the morning, peering into the bushes, turning over heaps of leaves and probing the bracken with his stick, but all to no purpose. No gruesome corpse, either of English nobleman or of dark-skinned Asiatic, met their straining eyes.
"We must give it up," said the General at last. "Now that we are down here we had better go out through the wicket-gate into the village and tell the constable to send for his superiors. We have reached the limit, and poor Beaumanoir's secrets can belong to him no longer, I fear."
Forsyth assented that it would be no longer advisable, even if it were possible, to keep the Duke's affairs out of the hands of the police, and the two made their way toward the private gate in the park wall through which Beaumanoir had gone to church on his first memorable Sunday at Prior's Tarrant. They were approaching the gate, not by the path, but skirting the wall through the undergrowth, when a lissome body appeared suddenly at the top of the wall, poised there for a moment, and then dropped almost at their feet. It was Azimoolah Khan, dusty and out of breath, but very far from being a dead man.
"How is this, thou son of Sheitan?" exclaimed the General, affecting sternness to hide his pleasure. "It was not your wont in the jungle days to desert your post in times of danger. In your absence some evil thing has befallen him whom we are pledged to guard."
"Nay, Sahib, but hear me. It is not thy servant who has deserted his post, but his post which has deserted him," protested the Pathan, with dignified reproof. "The great Lord Duke ran away—oh so far and so fast—and thy servant ran after in his tracks to see that no harm befell him."
"Well, where is the Duke now, man?" the General blurted out in great excitement. "Surely you haven't come back to tell me that you have lost him?"