“It is not our fault, Light of Heaven, Father of the Poor, the Mem-Sahib came—­the white Mem-Sahib.  We are poor men; we have no fault at all.”

Hamilton listened for a moment to the storm of words and protesting cries.  Then he raised his hand and there was silence, but for a sound of rising wind without and the sobbing of the natives.

“Pir Bakhs,” he said to the head of them all, the butler, “tell me all you know.  Your mistress is dead.  Who is responsible?”

The butler came forward and fell at his master’s feet with clasped hands.

“Lord of the Earth, I know nothing but this.  At five all was quiet in the house, and our mistress sat in the garden singing.  Then came to the door two runners with a palanquin.  They asked to see our mistress.  I said wait.  I went to the garden.  I said the white Mem-Sahib has come in a palanquin.  My mistress said, ’I will see her.’  She went to the drawing-room, and the white Mem-Sahib came in, and they drank tea together.  Your servant is a poor man, and he saw no more till the runners went away with the palanquin.  So we said, ‘The white Mem-Sahib has gone,’ and my mistress said to me she felt drowsy and must sleep, and went upstairs to the Light of Heaven’s room and shut the door.  And your servant was laying the table in your honour’s dining-room a little later, and he went to close the jillmills,[1] for the wind was rising, and your servant saw through the jillmill the white Mem-Sahib again getting into her palanquin that had appeared once more at the back, and the runners ran with it very fast into the desert; then your servant ran out to ask the other servants why the white Mem-Sahib had come back, and the ayah met him at the door and said she had found our mistress killed in her room; and your honour’s servant is a poor man, and has wept ever since.”

[Footnote 1:  Wooden shutters.]

Hamilton listened in perfect silence.  The man’s face was lined with grief, the tears rolled in streams down his livid cheeks.  A wail went up from the other servants at his words.  Hamilton and his mistress were their idols, and his grief was very real to themselves.

Hamilton stretched out his hand to the trembling man with a benign gesture.

“Pir Bakhs, I believe you.  You have served me many years, and never lied to me.  This is another’s work, not yours.  Be at peace.  You have no fault.”

The butler wept louder, and the others wailed with him, calling upon Heaven to bless their master and avenge their mistress.

Hamilton turned from them to the dark dining-room, which he crossed to the hall; through this he walked in the darkness as a blind man walks, to the entrance.