“I can quite believe it. Well, no matter. I ought to have warned you. No, I know nothing against the man; but why does he always keep out of my way, if it isn’t that he’s afraid to meet me? And he has friends in Nalapur, has he? Did he go to see them as soon as you arrived?”
“Fairly soon after. I thought it as well to let him trot off, so that he might bring us warning if there was any talk of attacking us.”
“Quite so. But I hardly think he’d have done it. So they want the Sheikh-ul-Jabal given up? I’ll see them hanged first!”
“Is there anything peculiar about the man, Major,—any mystery——?”
“None that I know of. Why?”
“Both the Amir and Gobind Chand looked at me very hard when they made the demand, almost as if they expected to stare me out of countenance. And there was a sort of uneasiness about the whole interview, as if either they knew more than I did, or suspected me of knowing more than they did—I couldn’t make out which. And perhaps you didn’t notice, sir, that when Gobind Chand met you first he gave a great start? I noticed it, and so did Porter.”
“No, I didn’t see it. That wretched mystery cropping up again, I suppose! I wish I could get to the bottom of it. But there’s nothing mysterious about the Sheikh-ul-Jabal. He was a great friend of our unfortunate victim, Nasr Ali, who married his sister, and he managed to escape into our territory, with a few followers, when the trouble came. He had done us good service in the Ethiopian war, and Sir Henry, whose conscience was pricking him pretty badly, was glad to promise him protection, though Wilayat Ali has never ceased to press for his being given up. He is a heretic of some sort, and the orthodox Nalapuri Mullahs hate him like poison.”
“A Sufi, I suppose?” said Sir Dugald.
“No; he is the head of a sect of his own—the remnant of some organisation which was very powerful at the time of the Crusades, I believe. Even now he seems to have adherents all over Asia, and several times he has given us valuable information. But Wilayat Ali swears that he is perpetually intriguing against him, and so the Government have rewarded him rather scurvily—forbidden him to quit Khemistan. The poor man laid it so much to heart that he took a vow never to leave his house again as long as the sun shone upon the earth.”
“Then he is a state prisoner somewhere? Is he down at the coast?”