Then Hunsa crossed the roomal in his left hand, and stretching out his right grasped the Chief’s dagger where it lay upon the floor, and drove it, from behind, through his heart.  He placed the knife upon the floor where drops of blood, trickling from its curved point, lay upon the white marble like spilled rubies.  He unfastened the silver chain that carried the keys and crossed the floor with the slouching crouch of a hyena.  Rapidly he opened the iron box, took the paper Amir Khan had placed there, and hesitated for a second, his ghoulish eyes gloating over the jewels and gold; but he did not touch them, his animal cunning holding him to the simple plan that was now working so smoothly.  He locked the box and slipped the key-chain about the dead man’s waist; then seizing the right hand of his victim he smeared the thumb in blood and imprinted it upon the paper just beside the seal of the British Raj, muttering:  “This will do for Nana Sahib as well as your head, Pindari, and is much easier hidden.”

He placed the paper in a roll of his turban, blew out the flickering light, and with noiseless bare feet glided cautiously to the door.  The purdah swung back and there was left just the silent room, all dark, save for little trickles of silver that dropped spots and grotesque lines upon the body of the dead Chief.  It fell full upon the knife flooding its blade into a finger-like mirror, and glinted the blood drops as if in reality they had turned to rubies.  Without the purdah Hunsa did not crouch and run, he walked swiftly, though noiselessly, as one upon a message.  Ten paces of the dim-lighted hall he turned to the right to a balcony.

Here at the top of a narrow winding stone stairway Hunsa listened; no sound came from below, and he glided down.  Beneath was a balcony corresponding with the one above, and just beyond was a domed cell that he had investigated.  It was a cell that at one time had witnessed the quick descent of headless bodies to the river below.  A teakwood beam with a round hole in the centre spanned the cell just above an opening that had all the appearance of a well.  Hunsa had investigated this exit for this very purpose, for he had been somewhat of a privileged character about the palace.

He now unslung from about his waist, hidden by his baggy trousers, a strong, fine line of camel hair.  Making one end fast to the teakwood sill he went down hand over hand, his strong hard palms gripping the soft line.  At the end of it he still had a drop of ten or twelve feet, but bracing his shoulders to one wall and his feet to the other he let go.  Hunsa was shaken by his drop of a dozen feet, but the soft sand of the river bed had broken the shock of his fall.  He picked himself up, and crouching in the hiding shadow of the bank hurried along for fifty yards; then he clambered up cautiously to the waste of white sand that was studded with the tents of the Pindari horsemen.  On his right, floating up the hill in terraces, its marble white in the moonlight, was the palace where Amir Khan lay dead.  It still held a sombre quietude; the murder had not been discovered.