He rode off quickly when he had ended, like a man who understands that he has said too much, and then halted and returned.

“You will not tell that story?” he said.

“No,” answered Ralston abstractedly.  “I shall never tell that story.”

He understood the truth at last.  So that was the message which Shere Ali had sent.  No wonder, he thought, that the glare broadened over Chiltistan.

CHAPTER XX

THE SOLDIER AND THE JEW

These two events took place at Peshawur, while Linforth was still upon the waters of the Red Sea.  To be quite exact, on that morning when Ralston was taking his long walk towards Jamrud with the zemindar Futteh Ali Shah, Linforth was watching impatiently from his deck-chair the high mosque towers, the white domes and great houses of Mocha, as they shimmered in the heat at the water’s edge against a wide background of yellow sand.  It seemed to him that the long narrow city so small and clear across the great level of calm sea would never slide past the taffrail.  But it disappeared, and in due course the ship moved slowly through the narrows into Aden harbour.  This was on a Thursday evening, and the steamer stopped in Aden for three hours to coal.  The night came on hot, windless and dark.  Linforth leaned over the side, looking out upon the short curve of lights and the black mass of hill rising dimly above them.  Three and a half more days and he would be standing on Indian soil.  A bright light flashed towards the ship across the water and a launch came alongside, bearing the agent of the company.

He had the latest telegrams in his hand.

“Any trouble on the Frontier?” Linforth asked.

“None,” the agent replied, and Linforth’s fever of impatience was assuaged.  If trouble were threatening he would surely be in time—­since there were only three and a half more days.

But he did not know why he had been brought out from England, and the three and a half days made him by just three and a half days too late.  For on this very night when the steamer stopped to coal in Aden harbour Shere Ali made his choice.

He was present that evening at a prize-fight which took place in a music-hall at Calcutta.  The lightweight champion of Singapore and the East, a Jew, was pitted against a young soldier who had secured his discharge and had just taken to boxing as a profession.  The soldier brought a great reputation as an amateur.  This was his first appearance as a professional, and his friends had gathered in numbers to encourage him.  The hall was crowded with soldiers from the barracks, sailors from the fleet, and patrons of the fancy in Calcutta.  The heat was overpowering, the audience noisy, and overhead the electric fans, which hung downwards from the ceiling, whirled above the spectators with so swift a rotation that those looking up saw only a vague blur in the air.  The ring had been roped off upon the stage, and about three sides of the ring chairs for the privileged had been placed.  The fourth side was open to the spectators in the hall, and behind the ropes at the back there sat in the centre of the row of chairs a fat red-faced man in evening-dress who was greeted on all sides as Colonel Joe.  “Colonel Joe” was the referee, and a person on these occasions of great importance.