"Yes," the major answered.
"Very good," Captain Swinton declared. "I'll give you some data. Lord Victor's father, Earl Craig, is under-secretary to India. There was some extraordinary jumble of a state document intended for the Viceroy of India. Whether its misleading phraseology was carelessness or traitorous work on the part of a clerk, nobody knows, but it read that the sircar was to practically conscript Indians—Mussulman and Hindu alike—to fight against the Turks and Germans in the war that we all feel is about to come. This paper bore the official seal; had even been signed. Then Earl Craig's copy of it disappeared—was stolen from Lord Victor, who was acting as his secretary. A girl, with whom the young man was infatuated, was supposed to have taken it for the Prussians for use in India. The girl disappeared, and Lord Victor was sent out here for fear he would get in communication with her again. Neither Lord Victor nor the earl knows I am a secret-service man. Maharajah Darpore is marked 'low visibility' in the viceroy's book of rajah rating, and, as Earl Craig wanted an Anglo-Indian as a companion to his son, this seemed a good chance to investigate quietly. There's another little matter," the captain continued quietly as he drew from his pocket a sapphire in the rough.
"Where the devil did you get that, captain? I thought that old professor pirate had stolen it," Finnerty gasped.
"That's not the stone you lost last night, major."
Finnerty looked at Swinton incredulously as the latter handed him the sapphire, for it was exactly like the stolen stone, even to the inscription.
"Let me explain," Captain Swinton said. "Some time since one Akka, a hillman, came down out of Kululand into Simla leading a donkey that carried two bags of sapphires in the rough. Nobody knew what they were, so, of course, he found it hard to sell his blue stones. That night the stones disappeared, and Akka was found in the morning at the bottom of an abyss with a jade-handled knife sticking in his back. He must have dropped over the rocks so quickly the killer hadn't time to withdraw his knife. About Akka's neck, hidden under his dirty felt coat, was hung this sapphire, and it was given to me, as I was put on the case. I took a trip up into Kululand with a hillman who claimed to have come in with Akka as guide. I got a very fine bharal head—almost a record pair of horns—and a bullet in my left leg that still gives me a limp at times, but as to sapphires in the rough I never saw another until last night."
Finnerty laughed. "India is one devil of a place for mystery."
Swinton related the incidents of the night before, and Baboo Dass' story of the three sapphires, adding: "Of course that's Hindu mythology up to date, the attributing of miraculous powers of good and evil to those blue stones."
Finnerty shifted uneasily in his chair; then, with a little, apologetic smile, said: "I'm getting less dogmatic about beliefs and their trimmings—absolute superstition, I suppose—and if a sapphire, or anything else, were associated in my mind with disaster I'd chuck the devilish thing in the river."
"At any rate, major, the main thing, so far as my mission is concerned, is that if Prince Ananda happens to get possession of the three sapphires every Buddhist—which means all the fighting Nepalese—will believe the expected Buddha has arrived."