Finnerty thought of the stone on the road, and, passing into the bungalow, wakened Swinton. "Sorry, old boy, but we'd better have a look at that stone—there are carts coming down the hill."
"Bless me! Almost dropped off to sleep, I'm afraid!" and the captain sat up.
When they arrived at the scene of Swinton's adventure, Finnerty, peering over the embankment, said: "The dogcart is hung up in a tree halfway down. I expect you'll find that chita at the bottom, kicked to death by the Cabuli."
Swinton, indicating an abrasion on the boulder that might have been left by the iron tire of a wheel, said: "My cart didn't strike this, and there are no other iron-wheel marks on the road; just part of this beastly plot—to be used as evidence that the stone put me over the bank."
"They even rolled the boulder down to leave an accidental trail. There's not a footprint of a native, though. Hello, by Jove!" Finnerty was examining two bamboos growing from the bank above the road. "See that?" and his finger lay on an encircling mark where a strap had worn a smooth little gutter in the bamboo shell two feet from the ground. Both bamboos, standing four feet apart, showed this line of friction. "Here's where they held the chita in leash, and, when you arrived, took off his hood and slipped the straps. We'll just roll that boulder off the road and go back to breakfast."
"Oh, Lord!" the major exclaimed, as, midway of their breakfast, there came the angry trumpeting of an elephant. "That's Moti, and she wants her bell. She's an ugly devil when she starts; but, while I don't mind losing some sleep, I must eat."
"The devil of it is that all this circumstantial evidence we're gathering isn't worth a rap so far as the real issue is concerned," the captain said from the depths of a brown study.
"I understand," Finnerty answered. "It proves who is trying to get rid of us, but the government is not interested in our private affairs—it wants to check Ananda's state intrigues."
"And also we won't mention any of these things to our young friend whom I hear outside," Swinton added, as the voice of Lord Victor superseded the beat of hoofs on the road.
As he swung into the breakfast room, Gilfain explained cheerily: "Thought I'd ride around this way to see what had happened; my bearer heard in the bazaar Swinton had been eaten by a tiger—but you weren't, old top, were you?"