Charteris assumed a deeply sententious manner. "You are not wholly unacquainted with the literature of our vivacious kindred across the Atlantic, I believe, Hal? Well, do you know the expression 'playing possum'? because that's what I did. I got a glancing bullet across my forehead, where this imposing scar is, just here, which stunned me at first, and must have made a ghastly-looking wound, but the unconsciousness didn't last more than a minute or two. At least, that's what I gather from seeing my precious Darwanis in full flight when I got the blood out of my eyes. Their way of conducting a retreat was always to fire a volley and then run away helter-skelter, and though I had been teaching them better manners, I always knew they would break if I wasn't there to stiffen them. I was a good deal knocked about, besides the wound on the head, and before I could manage to roll into the bushes, Sher Singh's men were back. I thought it well to appear more dead than I was, especially when I saw them going round and finishing off all our wounded that they could find. They were in a great hurry, and I gathered that your men had driven them off, and they felt it advisable to make themselves scarce. I was in full view, unluckily, and expected to get the coup de grâce every moment, but when they came to me they took me up without troubling to see whether I was alive or not, and threw me over a horse. It was not what you would call a luxurious mode of travelling, and twice I managed to drop off, feet first, hoping they would leave me lying where I was and go on in disgust. They were disgusted—highly, but their remarks made it clear that Sher Singh had ordered you and me to be brought in dead or alive, preferably alive, so I condescended to exhibit signs of life, and they hoisted me up behind one of them. That was an uncommon disagreeable ride, I can tell you."
"I started to come back and look for you, Bob, but I couldn't get far enough."
"Of course you couldn't. Why, this alone"—he touched the sling of Gerrard's broken arm—"shows that you were much worse hurt than I was. But I was pretty well done for, and a most gruesome object, when we came up with Sher Singh. His manners ain't exactly ingratiating at the best of times, as you have more than once remarked to me, but when he saw my unlucky hair, his language was positively improper. You see, it was my misfortune—and your very good fortune, I'm inclined to think—that I wasn't you. He even sent for water and had some of the blood washed off my face, to make sure, I suppose, that we hadn't exchanged wigs in the hope of deceiving him, and when he was quite sure who I wasn't, I expected nothing better than to be cut into little bits there and then. But some one ventured to suggest something, and he came at me with great fury and demanded whether I knew where Partab Singh's hidden treasure was. I know I ought to have struck a heroic attitude and refused to speak, but as a matter of fact, I fainted. It was horribly ill-timed, for Sher Singh is bound to believe for ever that it was sheer terror of his alarming aspect that did it, but it was precious fortunate for me, for when I woke up I was in a palanquin, and they had tied up my head and looked after me a bit. Dear, good, sympathetic souls! how they did try to make things pleasant for me—always dinning into my ears that Sher Singh was fattening me for the slaughter—the torture, I mean! They used to congregate outside and discuss tortures in the halts, when I might have had a chance to get a little sleep if there had been any air, like a whole regiment of Fat Boys."
"If we had only known you were alive, Bob!"
"Oh, don't think I'm trying to make your flesh creep. All's well that ends well, and it's a useful experience to have been through. Shows a fellow he can stand a good deal more than he ever thought he could, I mean. But perhaps it was just as well it was me and not you."
"Complimentary, as usual!" Gerrard's laugh was a little forced.
"It's merely a question of nerves, old boy. You would have been picturing the details over and over again when the beggars were not talking about 'em, whereas I was able to put them out of my mind. Well, we got to Agpur at last, and once in the palace, Sher Singh set to work to try kindness. He let me take up my quarters—watched day and night, of course—in your old Residency, which looks a good deal the worse for wear since you left it. The servants you left in charge seem to have taken first choice when they heard you were hardly likely to come back, and then the palace servants and the guards had their turn. Your books were all torn to pieces—they must have thought you had gold-leaf hidden between the pages—and scattered all about the place. I camped in the ruins, and Sher Singh came to see me twice. He talked to me like a man and a brother, pointed out how important it was for him to find the treasure, what a guarantee of peace it would be, and how he was obviously the rightful owner now that his father and brother were dead. I agreed with him in everything, but declined respectfully to say whether I knew where it was or not. When he proceeded to threats, I told him that he must think me as big a fool as I was beginning to consider him. I was not going to tell him whether I knew the secret, because if I did know it, he would at once begin to make things very unpleasant for me, and if I didn't, he might kill me as useless. On the other hand, he could not proceed to extremities while he was still uncertain, because if I knew the hiding-place, he would have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, and if I didn't, he would have thrown away uselessly his one chance of placating Antony. That was just when Nisbet was beginning to thunder at the gates of Agpur—or rather, a good way off them—so it appealed to him. Of course the flaw in the argument was that if he knew his business, his torturer might contrive to extract the answer to the question, and the secret, without killing me, but I had to treat that possibility as absolutely non-existent. Still, he found out the secret at last."
"Bob!" cried Gerrard anxiously.
"Sold again. This was how he did it. After dogging me all over the place, trying to discover by my face where the treasure might be hidden, they hit upon a new plan, by which, if the worst came to the worst, they could produce my body quite free from marks of violence, and so satisfy Antony. It was a fiendish thing, Hal. As soon as ever I went to sleep, day or night, they woke me up, and asked me if I knew where the treasure was. I stood it for two days and nights, but if it had gone on, I swear to you I must have given in; I was pretty near mad then. But curiously enough, Sher Singh discovered the treasury for himself in an odd sort of way. You know the great tank where the lotus grows? Well, one of Sher Singh's ladies brought some gold-fish with her from Adamkot and turned them into it. The fish all died—change of diet, I suppose, but she swore that the deaf and dumb boatman had killed them. It was clearly a case of 'Off with his head!' for the poor wretch couldn't defend himself, but he made signs that if they would let him off he would show them something. They were open to a deal, and he took them across to the thicket of bamboos, and showed them the door in the wall, making them understand somehow that old Partab Singh used to go that way often at night. They lost the scent when they found that the door only led down to the wild beasts' pit, but picked it up again by a very pretty bit of deduction. It was quite certain that the treasury couldn't be under the pit or under the tank, so that the passage leading to it must pass between them, and it must lie in the direction either of the palace or the Residency. They broke ground in the Residency direction first, sinking two or three shafts in likely places, while I watched them with great interest, and asked intelligent questions. It was the one way I had of getting a little bit even with them for what they were doing to me. They held to the Residency theory because they couldn't see otherwise how you managed to get at the treasure for paying the soldiers without being discovered, but Sher Singh never believed in it much. Once when he was a small boy his father let him come with him into the ordinary treasury under the zenana, and he heard what sounded to him like men working underground not very far off. He couldn't make out where the sound came from, and his father diddled him with some fairy-tale to account for it, but now he remembered. So he had every inch of the treasury walls examined, and they came on the air-hole looking into the passage. Then they had only to break down the wall between, and there they were—and I give you my word for it, Hal, I was thankful! When they were all busy watching what was being done, and the gold was being handed up through a shaft that they dug, I just dropped down and went to sleep. It wasn't for long, but when I woke up I felt fit to face Sher Singh or the devil himself."
"Pretty much the same thing, after all," said Gerrard grimly.