We dragged our prisoners into the sitting-room, and stood them up in front of Grim after the doctor and Mabel had attended to their hurts, which weren’t especially serious; although nobody need expect to get in the way of Jeremy’s fist and feel comfortable for several hours afterwards.  The cut made in the second man’s neck by broken glass needed several stitches, but the third man was only winded from having been sat on, and of course he was much more sorry for himself than either of the other two—­a fact that Grim noted.

There was another noticeable circumstance that shed light on human nature and Grim’s knowledge of it.  They were all three eager to tell their story, although not necessarily the same story; whereas Narayan Singh, who knew that every word he might say would be believed implicitly, was in no hurry to tell his at all.

Now when you’re dealing with Eastern and near-Eastern people of the sort who lie instinctively (and it may be that this applies to the West as well) it’s a good plan to establish, if you can, a basis of truth for them to build their tale on; because the truth acts like acid on untruth.  They’re going to lie in any case; but lies told without any reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment’s notice to explain away another’s straightforward statement.  There’s a plausible theory that culprits taken in the act are best examined in secret, one by one, in ignorance of all the evidence against them.

The wise method is to let them hear the evidence against themselves.  Nine times out of ten they will accept that as unanswerable, and strive to twist its meaning or smother it under a mass of lies.  But the truth they have accepted, as I have said, works just like acid and destroys their argument almost as fast as they build it up.  In the few cases when that doesn’t happen, they break down altogether and confess.

Anyhow, Grim, who taught me what I have just written, refused to listen to their bleating until Narayan Singh first told in their hearing all that he knew about the night’s events.  They were forced to sit down on the floor and listen to him like three coffee-shop loungers being told a story; and I don’t doubt that the effect was strengthened by the Sikh’s standing facing them, for the contrast was as between jackals and a lion.

Not that they were small men, for they weren’t, or mere ten-dollar assassins picked up in the suk.  They looked well fed, and wore fine linen, whereas Narayan Singh was in rags and had lost weight in our recent desert marching, so that his cheek-bones stood out and he looked superficially much more like a man at bay than they did.

But their well-cared-for faces were lean in the wrong place, and puffy under the eyes.  In place of courage they flaunted an insolent leer, and the smile intended to convey self-confidence betrayed to a close observer anxiety bordering on panic.

The most offensive part about them really was their feet, which are indices of character too often overlooked.  They had come to their task in slippers, which they had kicked off before reaching the veranda, and instead of the firm, tough feet that a real man stands on, what they displayed as they squatted were subtle, soft things, not exactly flabby, but even more suggestive of treachery than their thin beaks and shifty eyes.