Both of the guards lay dead.  They lay quite neatly, side by side, without a sign about them to show that they had met with violence.  Brown rolled one body over, though, and then the cause of death became more obvious.  A stream of blood welled out of the man’s back, from between the shoulder-blades—­warm blood, that had not even started to coagulate.

“They’ve been dead about three minutes!” commented Brown, rising, and wiping his hands in the road-dust to get the blood off them.  “Pick ’em up.  Carefully, now!  Frog-march ’em, face-downwards.  That’s better!  Now, forward.  Quick, march!”

The procession advanced toward the guardhouse in grim silence, and once again there was no challenge when there should have been.  The lamp was still burning in the guardroom, for they could see it plainly as they drew nearer, but there was no noise of a sentry’s footfalls, or hoarse “Halt!” and “Who comes there?”

Nor was there any sign yet of the man whom Brown had left to guard both “clink” and guardroom.  Brown let them take their dead comrades into the guardroom first, then set two fresh guards at the door, and covered up the bodies with a sheet before commencing to investigate.

He started off toward the cell where he had imprisoned the fakir.  He went by himself, and no one volunteered to go with him.

He had gone five yards when the second explanation met his eyes.  This time there was no need to stoop down, nor to turn any body over.  The sentry whom he had left to guard both cell and guardroom stood bolt upright, with his mouth and his eyes wide open; skewered to the wall of the guardhouse by an iron spike, which pierced his chest.

“A lamp and four men here!” ordered Brown, without waiting to let the horror of the sight sink in.  “Take that poor chap down, and lay him in the guardroom beside the others.  How?  How should I know?  Pull it out, or break it off—­I don’t care which; don’t leave him there, that’s all.”

He walked on toward the cell-door, while they labored, and fingered gingerly around the spike, which must have been driven through the sentry’s chest with a hammer.

“I thought as much!” he muttered.  And, though be had not thought as much, he might have done so.  “I knew that a man who could maim his own body in that way was capable of any crime in the calendar!”

The door of the cell stood open, and there was no sign of any fakir, or of any one who might have helped him go—­nothing but an empty cell, with the haunting smell of the fakir still abiding in it.

Bill Brown spat, and closed the cell-door.

“I’m thinking that Juggut Khan told nothing but the truth,” he muttered.  “Things look right, don’t they, if that’s so!  Obey, Obey!  I’d have liked to see England just once again—­I would indeed.  If I could only see her just once.  If I’d a letter from her, or her picture.  This is a rotten, rat-in-a-hole, lonely, uncreditable way to die!  I wish Juggut Khan were here.  I’d have somebody to help me keep my good courage up in that case.”