“But as I looked down from the top I knew why the feeling had left me. There, in the dip of the sand below me on the far side, lay a man, curled up as though asleep. I knew then that I had not been asleep that first day.
“I ran down the dune to his side hoping that he was only asleep, though somehow at heart I doubted it. Then, as I bent over him, I knew he was not sleeping, or rather that he had gone to sleep for good and all.
“There was nothing much in that; one had seen plenty of dead men before. Besides, it was the ’flu-time still in those parts, and I had picked up people dying or dead along the roadside more than once. But the point was that this was not the roadside, and it puzzled me as to what the man could have been doing in this out-of-the-way corner miles and miles away from any road, even what Central Asia calls a road.
“I examined him closely, and then I sat down and thought quick and hard. Remember that at that time I had been reading the old diary rather a lot, and this man was a shock to me apart from the way I had located him.
“He was gaunt and haggard, and by the look of him had suffered from hunger and thirst before he pegged out; in fact, I rather thought he had died of thirst.
“But that was nothing much; it was first his colour, for as I lifted his arm the loose sleeve slipped back, and the arm was nearly as white as mine. I don’t think he can have been dead more than a couple of days at most. And his type of features was quite unlike the average man in those parts, far too straight and regular. However, fair-skinned people are common enough in North Asia, though not as a rule quite as fair as this man.
“But the next thing I noted was that his wrists were all chafed, as though his hands had been bound recently. Remember I had been reading that diary. I looked at them very carefully for fear I might be imagining things, and the marks were more noticeable on the other arm than on the one I first touched.
“I pulled his clothes open to see if there were any marks or papers, and then I got the shock of my life. Around the shoulder was a blood-clotted bandage that had slipped to one side, and below it showed an open wound in the muscles just below the joint. There was a similar wound at the back.
“It was the sort of wound a sharp shell-splinter makes, or, if you like, the sort of wound that would be made by a steel-shod arrow that had passed right through the top of the arm, and then perhaps been pulled through or broken off.”
Wrexham paused and refilled his pipe. I think he was waiting for us to say something, but we both were silent. I’ve known Wrexham pretty intimately for some years, and he does not invent things, nor does it intrigue him to pull people’s legs with fairy stories. He is, moreover, a most matter-of-fact person, rather sceptical as a rule, and not inclined to believe anything that he cannot see himself. His reports in the field, albeit painfully written and laboriously compiled, used to be masterpieces of accurate information.