Seeing neither of us ventured any remark, he went on:
“Then I started hunting through his kit. His clothes were rather unfamiliar in type: there was a short skin outer garment, much like the poshtin[2] common to most of the cold parts of Asia, though the embroidery on it was of unfamiliar pattern. Under that he wore a sort of short pleated smock of very fine cloth though worn, a fawn-coloured linen it seemed to be; and around the throat, and at the skirt edges, it was embroidered, again in the same unfamiliar pattern in green.
“He had long drawers of the same material as the smock, gartered in below the knees with thin strips of fineish green leather, and on his feet twisted leather sandals of a pattern quite new to me, not unlike Kashmiri chaplis, but with far more intricate plaiting.
“Round his waist was a twisted leather girdle, from which hung a short knife and a leather wallet. I opened the wallet and found some coins—you’ve seen one of them, and as you can imagine they, too, set me thinking—and there was something more besides that I’ll show you presently. There was nothing else of note. But while searching him I came to the conclusion that, if he hadn’t died of thirst, he might have died from sepsis from his wound. I had to bend pretty close, you see.
“Well, I did some pretty quick thinking. The coincidence between this fellow and what old John Wrexham wrote was too marked not simply to stick out. I felt sure then that the old man wrote cold, sober truth. Now for many reasons I didn’t want my men to see this body. They might start thinking too much and making up yarns that would queer my pitch if I managed to start an expedition. I can tell you, the sight of this man made me absolutely resolved to set out across the desert as soon as I could fix up a show that would give some chance of success.
“So I straightened him out and left him, but, before doing this, I cut the straps of his wallet and pushed it and the short knife into the big haversack I was carrying.
“Then I went back to the top of the sand-dune and got out my mapping stuff—not that I had any intention of doing much: I was too busy wondering about it all and trying to evolve theories, but I didn’t want my men to notice anything unusual. I expect, if they looked up at me at all, they thought I was carrying on in the usual way with my map spread out all businesslike.
“That night, when the men had dossed down, I sat up studying the contents of the wallet, and the next day made up my mind to come back to India as fast as I could travel and set about finding one of you two and going north again.”
“‘Once is nothing, twice is coincidence,’” quoted Forsyth. “You’ve got hold of the queerest kind of story, but as yet I see no light, save that it seems to substantiate your ancient uncle’s yarn. But why in hell you should find a man in practically the same circumstances as he did one hundred years ago has me cold. If I didn’t know you, I should say you were pulling our legs.”
“Then you can just imagine how much I wondered that night and many after. The coincidence was too absurdly striking, too close to be real, it seemed; and yet there it was, hard, undeniable fact. But before I go on I’ll show you what I call ‘three times,’ the ‘moral cert.’”