"Well?" Forrester asked, as the Bengali rushed up panting, and thrust a rifle into his hand.
"One-armed bald-head, sahib!" he gasped. "Hai! my lungs and liver! With rifles in arms, lucky find in cupboard, I come through old gentleman's bedroom. Sight I saw knocked me silly, sahib. One-armed josser lost all his hair: bald as basin; went slap bang into wall, sahib."
"Wen Shih?"
"Identical and no mistake, sahib, though hardly knew him without wig. And he had in hands old gentleman's funny old----"
"What!" broke in Forrester with a shout, glancing towards the spot where he had laid the head-dress. It was gone! Behind the throne a panel stood open in the wall.
"He's got it! He's taken it to the Old Man! We're dished!" cried Forrester.
Instinctively he took a few rapid paces towards the sanctum. But he remembered in a flash that he had been unable to find the door in the wall. He started back, in his agitation not knowing for the moment what to do for the best. Then suddenly his eyes fell on the rifle Hamid Gul had thrust into his hands. With a rapid jerk he threw open the chamber. It was full of cartridges, just as when he last had it in the rift.
His friends stared in amazement as he ran to the door, leapt over the fallen priests, and rushed into the courtyard. They followed him to the entrance. He was looking up into the air. On the far side of the enclosure the priests had emerged from their houses, and were standing in silence, gazing intently, eagerly upwards. When Forrester reached the wall he turned about, set the rifle to his shoulder, took steady aim, and fired. A dead silence followed the reverberations of the shot; then a yell of rage burst from the throng of priests, and they came leaping in one tumultuous mob towards the garden. At the same time, far to the left, a dark, bearded figure jumped down from the top of the outer wall, and rushed straight towards Forrester, spade in hand.
Forrester stood for a few seconds steadily gazing up, and the spectators in the portal saw his face pale, and a strange look come into his staring eyes. Then he shivered as though a blast of icy wind had struck upon him, and ran staggeringly back to the doorway. A moment behind him Sher Jang dashed into the pagoda.
"I hit him!" Forrester said under his breath, in the hushed tone of one who has witnessed a tragedy. "He was carrying the head-dress up the stairway to the Old Man. He rolled from roof to roof, and plunged down, down, he and the head-dress, into the rift."