He walked slowly until the driver had turned his gharry and was driving back.  Then, for a man afflicted with varicose veins the Babu displayed amazing agility.  He ran through the silent and deserted street until he came to a turning.  The lane which ran into the main road was a blind alley.  Mean hovels and shuttered booths flanked it, but at the end a tall house stood.  The Babu looked about him and perceived a cart standing in the lane.  He advanced to it and looked in.

“This is obvious place for satisfactory concealment,” he said, as with some difficulty he clambered in.  Over the edge of the cart he kept watch.  In a while he heard the sound of a man walking.  The man was certainly at some distance from the turning, but the Babu’s head went down at once.  The man whose footsteps he heard was wearing boots, but there would be one walking in front of that man who was wearing slippers—­Ahmed Ismail.

Ahmed Ismail, indeed, turned an instant afterwards into the lane, passed the cart and walked up to the door of the big house.  There he halted, and Shere Ali joined him.

“The gift was understood, your Highness,” he said.  “The message was sent from end to end of Chiltistan.”

“What gift?” asked Shere Ali, in genuine surprise.

“Your Highness has forgotten?  The melons and the bags of grain.”

Shere Ali was silent for a few moments.  Then he said: 

“And how was the gift interpreted?”

Ahmed Ismail smiled in the darkness.

“There are wise men in Chiltistan, and they found the riddle easy to read.  The melons were the infidels which would be cut to pieces, even as a knife cuts a melon.  The grain was the army of the faithful.”

Again Shere Ali was silent.  He stood with his eyes upon his companion.

“Thus they understand my gift to the Mullah?” he said at length.

“Thus they understood it,” said Ahmed Ismail.  “Were they wrong?” and since Shere Ali paused before he answered, Ahmed repeated the question, holding the while the key of his door between his fingers.

“Were they wrong, your Highness?”

“No,” said Shere Ali firmly.  “They were right.”

Ahmed Ismail put the key into the lock.  The bolt shot back with a grating sound, the door opened upon blackness.

“Will your Highness deign to enter?” he said, standing aside.

“Yes,” said Shere Ali, and he passed in.  His own people, his own country, had claimed and obtained him.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CASTING OF THE DIE