bared chest the life-blood welled with every movement of his tortured body.  He had been shot in the back as he lay asleep.  The lips covered with a bloody froth were drawn back tightly over the white teeth clenched in agony, and red foam lay on the black beard.  Out of the sweat-bathed, ghastly face the eyes glared in frenzy.  The features were contorted with pain.  Again and again the wild shrieks like the howl of a mad thing rang through the long room and out into the night.

With tear-filled eyes and heart torn with pity Wargrave looked down at him in silence.  Ashraf Khan was one of his best men.  “But where is the doctor sahib?” he asked the native officer suddenly.

The subhedar stared and shook his head.  In the excitement no one had thought of sending for the medical officer.  Wargrave turned to one of the men around the bed.

“Mahbub Khan, run hard to the Mess and call the doctor sahib.  Here, stop!” He remembered that Macdonald did not possess a revolver.  For all one knew he might encounter the murderer on his way.  Wargrave thrust Mrs. Dermot’s pistol into the sepoy’s hand, saying, “Give the sahib that.”

The man, who was barefoot, ran out of the chamber and went to his own barrack-room for his shoes, for the road was rocky and covered with sharp stones.  The subaltern turned away with a sigh from the bedside of his poor comrade.  He could do nothing now but avenge him.  As he walked away from the group he trod on an empty cartridge case and picked it up.  It had recently been fired.  It told its tale; for it showed that the assassin had reloaded over his victim and intended that the killing should not end there.  If he were the missing sentry then he had nine more cartridges left—­nine human lives in his blood-stained hand.  And as the subaltern crossed the verandah outside the barrack-room the jemadar met him and reported that all the rifles of the detachment had been examined and found clean except the missing weapon of the sentry, a young Pathan sepoy called Gul Mahommed.  It was remembered that the dying havildar (sergeant) had reprimanded him hotly on the previous day for appearing on parade with accoutrements dirty.  So little a cause was needed to send a man to his death!

The first thing to be done now was to hunt for the murderer.  While he went free no one’s life was safe.  Wargrave shuddered at the thought of danger coming to Muriel or her friend, and he hoped that they were safely shut in their house.  It was a difficult problem to know where to begin the search.  The Fort was full of hiding-places, especially at night.  And already the assassin might have escaped over the low wall surrounding it.  As Wargrave stood perplexed another Indian officer ran up, accompanied by two men with rifles.

“Sahib!  Sahib!” he whispered excitedly.  “The murderer is in my room, the one next that in which Ashraf Kahn was shot.  I left the door wide open when I ran out.  It is now shut and bolted from the inside and someone is moving about in it.”