He started off toward the cell where he had imprisoned the fakir. He went by himself, and no one volunteered to go with him.
He had gone five yards when the second explanation met his eyes. This time there was no need to stoop down, nor to turn any body over. The sentry whom he had left to guard both cell and guardroom stood bolt upright, with his mouth and his eyes wide open; skewered to the wall of the guardhouse by an iron spike, which pierced his chest.
“A lamp and four men here!” ordered Brown, without waiting to let the horror of the sight sink in. “Take that poor chap down, and lay him in the guardroom beside the others. How? How should I know? Pull it out, or break it off—I don't care which; don't leave him there, that's all.”
He walked on toward the cell-door, while they labored, and fingered gingerly around the spike, which must have been driven through the sentry's chest with a hammer.
“I thought as much!” he muttered. And, though he had not thought as much, he might have done so. “I knew that a man who could maim his own body in that way was capable of any crime in the calendar!”
The door of the cell stood open, and there was no sign of any fakir, or of any one who might have helped him go—nothing but an empty cell, with the haunting smell of the fakir still abiding in it.
Bill Brown spat, and closed the cell-door.
“I'm thinking that Juggut Khan told nothing but the truth,” he muttered. “Things look right, don't they, if that's so! Obey, Obey! I'd have liked to see England just once again—I would indeed. If I could only see her just once. If I'd a letter from her, or her picture. This is a rotten, rat-in-a-hole, lonely, uncreditable way to die! I wish Juggut Khan were here. I'd have somebody to help me keep my good courage up in that case.”
The lock on the cell-door was broken, so he only closed it, then started back toward the guardroom.
“Three rifles, and three ammunition pouches gone!” he muttered. “That's three weapons they've got, in any case. A hornet's nest'd be better stopping in than this place.”