‘Never mind your partner.  Where are your horse-trucks?’

’A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for the trains.’

‘The signal-box!  Yes.’

’And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand side — looking up the line thus.  But as regards Lutuf Ullah — a tall man with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound Aie!’

The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman; for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from depredations in the goods-yard.  Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.

’They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will wonder why there are no fakirs.  They are very clever boys —­ Barton Sahib and Young Sahib.’

He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the line girt for action.  A light engine slid through the station, and he caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab.

‘I did that child an injustice.  He is not altogether a fool,’ said Mahbub Ali.  ‘To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!’

When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth while to tell him any news of the night.  No one, at least, but one small horseboy, newly advanced to the great man’s service, whom Mahbub called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing.

‘It is all known to me,’ whispered Kim, bending above saddlebags.  ’Two Sahibs came up on a te-train.  I was running to and fro in the dark on this side of the trucks as the te-train moved up and down slowly.  They fell upon two men sitting under this truck — Hajji, what shall I do with this lump of tobacco?  Wrap it in paper and put it under the salt-bag?  Yes — and struck them down.  But one man struck at a Sahib with a fakir’s buck’s horn’ (Kim meant the conjoined black-buck horns, which are a fakir’s sole temporal weapon) — ’the blood came.  So the other Sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a short gun which had rolled from the first man’s hand.  They all raged as though mad together.’

Mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation.  ’No!  That is not so much dewanee [madness, or a case for the civil court — the word can be punned upon both ways] as nizamut [a criminal case].  A gun, sayest thou?  Ten good years in jail.’

’Then they both lay still, but I think they were nearly dead when they were put on the te-train.  Their heads moved thus.  And there is much blood on the line.  Come and see?’

’I have seen blood before.  Jail is the sure place — and assuredly they will give false names, and assuredly no man will find them for a long time.  They were unfriends of mine.  Thy fate and mine seem on one string.  What a tale for the healer of pearls!  Now swiftly with the saddle-bags and the cooking-platter.  We will take out the horses and away to Simla.’