We grew depressed.  Then silent.  Our meditations were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Narayan Singh in the door of the compartment, grinning full of news.

“They have opened the letter, sahib!  They accuse Yussuf Dakmar of deceiving them.  They threaten him with death.  Shall I interfere?”

“Any sign of the train crew?” Grim asked.

“Nay, they are gambling in the brake-van.”

Grim looked sharply at Hadad.

“What authority have you got?”

“None.  I am a personal friend of Feisul, that is all.”

“Well, we’ll pretend you’ve power to arrest them.  Ramsden, you’ve suddenly missed your letter.  You’ve accused Jeremy of stealing it.  He has confessed to selling it to Yussuf Dakmar.  Go forward in a rage and demand the letter back.  Start something before they’re ready for it!  We’ll be just behind you.”

“Leave Yussuf Dakmar to me!” insisted Jeremy.  “I pay the debt of an Anzac division!”

I hope I’ve never hurt a man who didn’t deserve it, or who wasn’t fit to fight; but I have to admit that Grim didn’t need to repeat the invitation.  I started forward in a hurry, and Jeremy elbowed Narayan Singh aside in order to follow next, Australians being notoriously unlady-like performers when anybody’s hat is in the ring.

By the time I reached the car ahead the train had entered a wild gorge circle by one of those astonishing hairpin curves with which engineers defeat Nature.  The panting engine slowed almost to a snail’s pace, having only a scant fuel ration with which to negotiate curve and grade combined.  To our right there was a nearly sheer drop of four hundred feet, with a stream at the bottom boiling among limestone boulders.

But there was no time to study scenery.  From the middle compartment of the car there came yells for help and the peculiar noise of thump and scuffle that can’t be mistaken.  Men fight in various ways, Lord knows, and the worst are the said-to-be civilized; but from Nome to Cape Town and all the way from China to Peru the veriest tenderfoot can tell in the dark the difference between fight and horseplay.

I reached the door of the compartment in time to see three of them (two bleeding from knife-wounds in the face) force Yussuf Dakmar backward toward the window, the whole lot stabbing frantically as they milled and swayed.  The fifth man was holding on to the scrimmage with his left hand and reaching round with his right, trying to stick a knife into Yussuf Dakmar’s ribs without endangering his own hide.

But the sixth man was the rascal I had kicked.  He had no room—­perhaps no inclination—­to get into the scrimmage; so he saw me first, and he needed no spur to his enmity.  With a movement as quick as a cat’s and presence of mind that accounted for his being leader of the gang, he seized the fifth man by the neck and spun him round to call his attention; and the two came for me together like devils out of a spring-trap.