Well, most streets have two ends.  So I walked forward, not taking much trouble about concealment, since it was not easy to walk silently.  If the Sikh can’t see his enemy he likes to fire first and challenge afterwards.  I preferred to be seen.  The sight of those uncompromising bayonets had changed my mind about the choice of evils.  The knife of a hardly probable assassin seemed a wiser risk than the ready triggers of the Punjaub.  Half-way down the street Suliman tugged at my cloak.

“That is the place where my mother is,” he said, pointing to a narrow door on the left.

But I was taking no chances in that direction—­not at that moment.  The little stone house was all in darkness.  There were no windows that I could see.  No sound came from it.  And farther down the street there was a lamp burning, whose light spelled safety from shots fired at the sound of foot-fall on suspicion.  I wanted that light between me and the Sikh platoon, yet did not dare run for it, since that would surely have started trouble.  It is my experience of Sikhs that when they start a thing they like to finish it.  They are very good indeed at explanations after the event.

The Sikhs must have seen us pass through the belt of gasoline light, but they did not challenge, so I went forward more slowly, with rather less of that creepy feeling that makes a man’s spine seem to belong to some one else.  Toward its lower end the street curved considerably, and we went about a quarter of a mile before the glare of another light began to appear around the bend.

That was at a cross-street, up which I proposed to turn more or less in the direction of the hotel.  But I did nothing of the sort.  There was a cordon of Sikhs drawn across there, too, with no British officer in sight to enforce discretion.

Come to think of it, I have always regarded a bayonet wound in the stomach as the least desirable of life’s unpleasantries.

So Suliman and I turned back.  I decided to investigate that dark little stone house, after all; for it occurred to me that, if that was the centre of conspiracy, then Grim would certainly show up there sooner or later and straighten out the predicament.  Have you ever noticed how hungry you get walking about aimlessly in the dark, especially when you are sleepy in the bargain?  Suliman began to whimper for food, and although I called him a belly on legs by way of encouragement he had my secret sympathy.  I was as hungry as he was; and I needed a drink, too, which he didn’t.  The little devil hadn’t yet included whiskey in his list of vices.

The side of the street an which the little stone house stood was the darker, so we sat down with our backs against its wall, and the boy proceeded to fall asleep at once.  The one thing I was sure I must not do was imitate him.  So I began to look about me in the hope of finding something sufficiently interesting to keep me awake.