to the rock-hewn temple of Galwihara and to enshrine it there. For the purpose of giving no clue to his movements, he chose to abandon his priestly robes, to disguise himself as a common tribesman, and, the better to defeat the designs of those who might seek to tear it from him and hold it for ransom, he hid the holy tooth in the barrel of a gun. That gun was in his hands when Ferralt leaped out and brained him!"
"Dear heaven!" cried Lady Chepstow with a sudden burst of realization. "Then that holy relic, that fetish, the sacred tooth of Buddha——"
"Is embedded in the fleshy part of the thigh of your little son!" he finished. "Enclosed, doubtless, in a sac or cyst which protective Mother Nature has wrapped round it, the tooth is there; and, for five whole years, he has been the living shrine that held it!"
And so, in truth, it proved to be. Ten minutes later the trifling operation was over, and the long-lost relic lay in the palm of the doctor's hand.
"Take it, Captain Hawksley," said Cleek, lifting it and carrying it over to him. "There is a man in Soho, one Arjeeb Noosrut, who will know it when he sees it; and there is a vast reward. Five lacs of rupees will pay off no end of debts, and a man with that balance at his banker's can't be accused of being a fortune-hunter when he asks in marriage the hand of the woman he loves. Mr. Narkom, is your motor ready? I'm a bit fagged out, and Dollops, I know, is all but starving. Ladies and gentlemen, my best respects. The riddle is solved. Good-night!"
CHAPTER IV
THE CALIPH'S DAUGHTER
It was half-past ten on a wet September night when Superintendent Narkom's limousine pulled up in front of Cleek's house in Clarges Street, and the superintendent himself, disguised, as he always was when paying visits to his famous ally, stepped out and with infinite care assisted a companion to alight.
The figure of this second person, however, was so hidden by the folds of a long, thickly wadded cloak, the hem of which reached to within an inch or so of the pavement, that it would have been impossible for a passer-by to have decided whether it was that of a man or a woman; but the manner in which it bent, added to a shuffling uncertainty of gait—a sort of "feeling the way" movement of the feet—as Mr. Narkom guided it across the pavement to the door, suggested either great age or a state of total blindness: an affliction, by the way, of such recent date that the sufferer had not yet acquired that air of confidence and that freedom of step which is Time's kind gift to the sightless.