“What must I do?” he asked simply.

Ralston nodded his head.  His attitude relaxed, his voice lost its dominating note.

“What you have to understand is this,” he explained.  “To drive the Road through Chiltistan means war.  It would be the cause of war if we insisted upon it now, just as it was the cause of war when your father went up from Peshawur twenty-six years ago.  Or it might be the consequence of war.  If the Chiltis rose in arms, undoubtedly we should carry it on to secure control of the country in the future.  Well, it is the last alternative that we are face to face with now.”

“The Chiltis might rise!” cried Linforth.

“There is that possibility,” Ralston returned.  “We don’t mean on our own account to carry on the Road; but the Chiltis might rise.”

“And how should I prevent them?” asked Dick Linforth in perplexity.

“You know Shere Ali?” said Ralston

“Yes.”

“You are a friend of his?”

“Yes.”

“A great friend.  His chief friend?”

“Yes.”

“You have some control over him?”

“I think so,” said Linforth.

“Very well,” said Ralston.  “You must use that control.”

Linforth’s perplexity increased.  That danger should come from Shere Ali—­here was something quite incredible.  He remembered their long talks, their joint ambition.  A day passed in the hut in the Promontoire of the Meije stood out vividly in his memories.  He saw the snow rising in a swirl of white over the Breche de la Meije, that gap in the rock-wall between the Meije and the Rateau, and driving down the glacier towards the hut.  He remembered the eagerness, the enthusiasm of Shere Ali.

“But he’s loyal,” Linforth cried.  “There is no one in India more loyal.”

“He was loyal, no doubt,” said Ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders, and, beginning with his first meeting with Shere Ali in Lahore, he told Linforth all that he knew of the history of the young Prince.

“There can be no doubt,” he said, “of his disloyalty,” and he recounted the story of the melons and the bags of grain.  “Since then he has been intriguing in Calcutta.”

“Is he in Calcutta now?” Linforth asked.

“No,” said Ralston.  “He left Calcutta just about the time when you landed in Bombay.  And there is something rather strange—­something, I think, very disquieting in his movements since he left Calcutta.  I have had him watched, of course.  He came north with one of his own countrymen, and the pair of them have been seen at Cawnpore, at Lucknow, at Delhi.”

Ralston paused.  His face had grown very grave, very troubled.

“I am not sure,” he said slowly.  “It is difficult, however long you stay in India, to get behind these fellows’ minds, to understand the thoughts and the motives which move them.  And the longer you stay, the more difficult you realise it to be.  But it looks to me as if Shere Ali had been taken by his companion on a sort of pilgrimage.”