Two hours later Captain Phillips mounted on to the roof of his house and saw that the guards were no longer at their posts.

CHAPTER XXXV

A LETTER FROM VIOLET

Within a week the Khan was back in his Palace, the smoke rose once more above the roof-tops of Kohara, and a smiling shikari presented himself before Poulteney Sahib in the grounds of the Residency.

“It was a good fight, Sahib,” he declared, grinning from ear to ear at the recollection of the battles.  “A very good fight.  We nearly won.  I was in the bazaar all that day.  Yes, it was a near thing.  We made a mistake about those cliffs, we did not think they could be climbed.  It was a good fight, but it is over.  Now when will your Excellency go shooting?  I have heard of some markhor on the hill.”

Poulteney Sahib stared, speechless with indignation.  Then he burst out laughing: 

“You old rascal!  You dare to come here and ask me to take you out when I go shooting, and only a week ago you were fighting against us.”

“But the fight is all over, Excellency,” the Shikari explained.  “Now all is as it was and we will go out after the markhor.”  The idea that any ill-feeling could remain after so good a fight was one quite beyond the shikari’s conception.  “Besides,” he said, “it was I who threw the gravel at your Excellency’s windows.”

“Why, that’s true,” said Poulteney, and a window was thrown up behind him.  Ralston’s head appeared at the window.

“You had better take him,” the Chief Commissioner said.  “Go out with him for a couple of days,” and when the shikari had retired, he explained the reason of his advice.

“That fellow will talk to you, and you might find out which way Shere Ali went.  He wasn’t among the dead, so far as we can discover, and I think he has been headed off from Afghanistan.  But it is important that we should know.  So long as he is free, there will always be possibilities of trouble.”

In every direction, indeed, inquiries were being made.  But for the moment Shere Ali had got clear away.  Meanwhile the Khan waited anxiously in the Palace to know what was going to happen to him; and he waited in some anxiety.  It fell to Ralston to inform him in durbar in the presence of his nobles and the chief officers of the British force that the Government of India had determined to grant him a pension and a residence rent-free at Jellundur.

“The Government of India will rule Chiltistan,” said Ralston.  “The word has been spoken.”

He went out from the Palace and down the hill towards the place where the British forces were encamped just outside the city.  When he came to the tents, he asked for Mr. Linforth, and was conducted through the lines.  He found Linforth sitting alone within his tent on his camp chair, and knew from his attitude that some evil thing had befallen him.  Linforth rose and offered Ralston his chair, and as he did so a letter fluttered from his lap to the ground.  There were two sheets, and Linforth stooped quickly and picked them up.